WICKED

The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West


By Gregory Maguire




Prologue


On the Yellow Brick Road


A mile above Oz, the Witch balanced on the wind's forward edge, as if
she were a green fleck of the land itself, flung up and sent wheeling
away by the turbulent air. 'White and purple summer thunderheads mounded
around her. Below, the Yellow Brick Road looped back on itself, like a
relaxed noose. Though winter storms and the crowbars of agitators had
torn up the road, still it led, relentlessly, to the Emerald City. The
Witch could see the companions trudging along, maneuvering around the
buckled sections, skirting trenches, skipping when the way was clear.
They seemed oblivious of their fate. But it was not up to the Witch to
enlighten them.

She used the broom as a sort of balustrade, stepping down from the sky
like one of her flying monkeys. She finished up on the topmost bough of
a black wiliow tree. Beneath, hidden by the fronds, her prey had paused
to take their rest. The Witch tucked her broom under her arm. Crablike
and quiet, she scuttled down a little at a time, until she was a mere
twenty feet above them. Wind moved the dangling tendrils of the tree.
The Witch stared and listened.

There were four of them. She could see a huge Cat of some sort-a Lion,
was it?-and a shiny woodman. The Tin Woodman was picking flits out of
the Lion's mane, and the Lion was muttering and squirming from the
aggravation. An animated Scarecrow lolled nearby, blowing dandelion
heads into the wind. The girl was out of sight behind shifting curtains
of the willow.

"Of course, to hear them tell it, it is the surviving sister who is the
crazy one," said the Lion. "What a Witch. Psychologically warped;
possessed by demons. Insane. Not a pretty picture."

"She was castrated at birth," replied the Tin Woodman calmly. "She was
born hermaphroditic, or maybe entirely male."

"Oh you, you see castration everywhere you look," said the Lion.

"I'm only repeating what folks say," said the Tin Woodman.

"Everyone is entitled to an opinion," said the Lion airily. "She was
deprived of a mother's love, is how I've heard it. She was an abused
child. She was addicted to medicine for her skin condition."

"She has been unlucky in love," said the Tin Woodman, "like the rest of
us." The Tin Woodman paused and placed his hand on the center of his
chest, as if in grief.

"She's a woman who prefers the company of other women," said the
Scarecrow, sitting up.

"She's the spurned lover of a married man."

"She is a married man."

The Witch was so stunned that she nearly lost her grip on the branch.
The last thing she ever cared for was gossip. Yet she had been out of
touch for so long that she was astonished at the vigorous opinions of
these random nobodies.

"She's a despot. A dangerous tyrant," said the Lion with conviction.

The Tin Woodman pulled harder than was necessary on a lock of mane.
"Everything's dangerous to you, you craven thing. I hear she's a
champion of home rule for the so-called Winkles."

"Whoever she is, she must surely be grieving the death of her sister,"
said the child, in a somber voice too rich, too sincere for one so
young. The Witch's skin crawled.

"Don't go feeling sympathetic now. I certainly can't." The Tin Woodman
sniffed, a bit cynically.

"But Dorothy's right," said the Scarecrow. "No one is exempt from grief."

The Witch was deeply irked by their patronizing speculations. She moved
around the trunk of the tree, stretching to catch a glimpse of the
child. The wind was picking up, and the Scarecrow shivered. While the
Tin Woodman continued fussing over the Lion's tresses, he leaned against
the Lion, who held him tenderly. "Storm on the horizon," said the Scarecrow.

Miles off, thunder echoed. "There-is-a-Witch on the horizon," said the
Tin Woodman, tickling the Lion. The Lion got spooked and rolled on top
of the Scarecrow, whimpering, and the Tin Woodman collapsed on top of
them both.

"Good friends, should we be wary of that storm?" said the girl.

The rising winds moved the curtain of greenery at last, and the Witch
caught sight of the girl. She was sitting with her feet tucked
underneath her and her arms wrapped around her knees. She was not a
dainty thing but a good-size farm girl, dressed in blue-and-white checks
and a pinafore. In her lap, a vile little dog cowered and whined.

"The storm makes you skittish. It's natural after what you've been
through," said the Tin Woodman. "Relax."

The Witch's fingers dug into the bark of the tree. She still could not
see the girl's face, just her strong forearms and the crown of her head
where her dark hair was pulled back into pigtails. Was she to be taken
seriously, or was she merely a blow-away dandelion seed, caught on the
wrong side of the wind? If she could see the girl's face, the Witch felt
she might know.

But as the Witch craned outward from the trunk, the girl at the same
time twisted her face, turning away. "That storm is coming closer, and
in a hurry." The feeling in her voice rose as the wind rose. She had a
throaty vehemence, like someone arguing through the threat of impending
tears. "I know storms, I know how they come upon you!"

"We're safer here," said the Tin Woodman.

"Certainly we are not," answered the girl, "because this tree is the
highest point around, and if lightning is to strike, it will strike
here." She clutched her dog. "Didn't we see a shed farther up the road?
Come, come; Scarecrow, if there's lightning, you'll burn the fastest!
Come on!"

She was up and running in an ungainly way, and her companions followed
in a mounting panic. As the first hard drops of rain fell, the Witch
caught sight, not of the girl's face, but of the shoes. Her sister's
shoes. They sparkled even in the darkening afternoon. They sparkled like
yellow diamonds, and embers of blood, and thorny stars.

If she had seen the shoes first, the Witch would never have been able to
listen to the girl or her friends. But the girl's legs had been tucked
beneath her skirt. Now the Witch was reminded of her need. The shoes
should be hers!-hadn't she endured enough, hadn't she earned them? The
Witch would fall on the girl from the sky, and wrestle those shoes off
her impertinent feet, if only she could.

But the storm from which the companions raced, farther and faster along
the Yellow Brick Road, troubled the Witch more than it did the girl

who had gone through rain and the Scarecrow whom lightning could burn.
The Witch could not venture out in such a vicious, insinuating wetness.
Instead, she had to tuck herself between some exposed roots of the black
willow tree, where no water could endanger her, and wait for the storm
to pass.

She would emerge. She always had before. The punishing political climate
of Oz had beat her down, dried her up, tossed her away-like a seedling
she had drifted, apparently too desiccated ever to take root. But surely
the curse was on the land of Oz, not on her. Though Oz had given her a
twisted life, hadn't it also made her capable?

No matter that the companions had hurried away. The Witch could wait.
They would meet again.



Book 1 - Munchkinlanders


The Root of Evil
----------------

From the crumpled bed the wife said, "I think today's the day. Look how
I've gone."

"Today? That would be like you, perverse and inconvenient," said her
husband, teasing her, standing at the doorway and looking outward, over
the lake, the fields, the forested slopes beyond. He could just make out
the chimneys of Rush Margins, breakfast fires smoking. "The worst
possible moment for my ministry. Naturally."

The wife yawned. "There's not a lot of choice involved. From what I
hear. Your body gets this big and it takes over-if you can't accommodate
it, sweetheart, you just get out of its way. It's on a track of its own
and nothing stops it now." She pushed herself up, trying to see over the
rise of her belly. "I feel like a hostage to myself. Or to the baby."

"Exert some self-control." He came to her side and helped her sit up.
"Think of it as a spiritual exercise. Custody of the senses. Bodily as
well as ethical continence."

"Self-control?" She laughed, inching toward the edge of the bed. "I have
no self left. I'm only a host for the parasite. Where's my self anyway?
Where'd I leave that tired old thing?"

"Think of me." His tone had changed; he meant this.

"Frex"-she headed him off-"when the volcano's ready there's no priest in
the world can pray it quiet."

"What will my fellow ministers think?"

"They'll get together and say, 'Brother Frexspar, did you allow your
wife to deliver your first child when you had a community problem to
solve? How inconsiderate of you; it shows a lack of authority. You're
fired from the position." She was ribbing him now, for there was no one
to fire

him. The nearest bishop was too distant to pay attention to the
particulars of a unionist cleric in the hinterland.

"It's just such terrible timing."

"I do think you bear half the blame for the timing," she said. "I mean,
after all, Frex."

"That's how the thinking goes, but I wonder."

"You wonder?" She laughed, her head going far back. The line from her
ear to the hollow below her throat reminded Frex of an elegant silver
ladle. Even in morning disarray, with a belly like a scow, she was
majestically good-looking. Her hair had the bright lacquered look of wet
fallen oak leaves in sunlight. He blamed her for being born to privilege
and admired her efforts to overcome it-and all the while he loved her, too.

"You mean you wonder if you're the father"-she grabbed the bedstead;
Frex took hold of her other arm and hauled her half-upright-"or do you
question the fatherliness of men in general?" She stood, mammoth, an
ambulatory island. Moving out the door at a slug's pace, she laughed at
such an idea. He could hear her laughing from the outhouse even as he
began to dress for the day's battle.

Frex combed his beard and oiled his scalp. He fastened a clasp of bone
and rawhide at the nape of his neck, to keep the hair out of his face,
because his expressions today had to be readable from a distance: There
could be no fuzziness to his meaning. He applied some coal dust to
darken his eyebrows, a smear of red wax on his flat cheeks. He shaded
his lips. A handsome priest attracted more penitents than a homely one.

In the kitchen yard Melena floated gently, not with the normal gravity
of pregnancy but as if inflated, a huge balloon trailing its strings
through the dirt. She carried a skillet in one hand and a few eggs and
the whiskery tips of autumn chives in the other. She sang to herself,
but only in short phrases. Frex wasn't meant to hear her.

His sober gown buttoned tight to the collar, his sandals strapped on
over leggings, Frex took from its hiding place-beneath a chest of
drawers-the report sent to him from his fellow minister over in the
village of Three Dead Trees. He hid the brown pages within his sash. He
had been keeping them from his wife, afraid that she would want to come
along-to see the fun, if it was amusing, or to suffer the thrill of it
if it was terrifying.

As Frex breathed deeply, readying his lungs for a day of oratory, Melena
dangled a wooden spoon in the skillet and stirred the eggs. The tinkle
of cowbells sounded across the lake. She did not listen; or she listened
but to something else, to something inside her. It was sound without
melody-like dream music, remembered for its effect but not for its
harmonic distresses and recoveries. She imagined it was the child inside
her, humming for happiness. She knew he would be a singing child.

Melena heard Frex inside, beginning to extemporize, warming up, calling
forth the rolling phrases of his argument, convincing himself again of
his righteousness.

How did that proverb go, the one that Nanny singsonged to her, years
ago, in the nursery?


Born in the morning,

Woe without warning;

Afternoon child

Woeful and wild;

Born in the evening,

Woe ends in grieving.

Night baby borning

Same as the morning.


But she remembered this as a joke, fondly. Woe is the natural end of
life, yet we go on having babies.

No, said Nanny, an echo in Melena's mind (and editorializing as usual):
No, no, you pretty little pampered hussy. We don't go on having babies,
that's quite apparent. We only have babies when we're young enough not
to know how grim life turns out. Once we really get the full measure of
it-we're slow learners, we women-we dry up in disgust and sensibly halt
production.

But men don't dry up, Melena objected; they can father to the death.

Ah, we're slow learners, Nanny countered. But they can't learn at all.

"Breakfast," said Melena, spooning eggs onto a wooden plate. Her son
would not be as dull as most men. She would raise him up to defy the
onward progress of woe.

"It is a time of crisis for our society," recited Frex. For a man who
condemned worldly pleasures he ate with elegance. She loved to watch the
arabesque of fingers and two forks. She suspected that beneath his
righteous asceticism he possessed a hidden longing for the easy life.

"Every day is a great crisis for our society." She was being flip,
answering him in the terms men use. Dear thick thing, he didn't hear the
irony in her voice.

"We stand at a crossroads. Idolatry looms. Traditional values in
jeopardy. Truth under siege and virtue abandoned."

He wasn't talking to her so much as practicing his tirade against the
coming spectacle of violence and magic. There was a side to Frex that
verged on despair; unlike most men, he was able to channel it to benefit
his life's work. With some difficulty she set herself down on a bench.
Whole choruses were singing wordlessly inside her head! Was this common
for every labor and delivery? She would have liked to ask the nosy local
women who would come around this afternoon, growling shyly at her
condition. But she didn't dare. She couldn't jettison her pretty accent,
which they found affected-but she could avoid sounding ignorant about
these basic matters.

Frex noticed her silence. "You're not angry I'm leaving you today?"

"Angry?" She raised her eyebrows, as if she had never encountered the
concept before.

"History crawls along on the peg legs of small individual lives," said
Frex, "and at the same time larger eternal forces converge. You can't
attend to both arenas at once."

"Our child may not have a small life."

"Now isn't the time to argue. Do you want to distract me from holy work
today? We're facing the presence of real evil in Rush Margins. I
couldn't live with myself if I ignored it." He meant this, and for such
intensity she had fallen in love with him; but she hated him for it too,
of course.

"Threats come-they'll come again." Her last word on the subject. "Your
son will only be born once, and if this watery upheaval inside is any
indication, I think it's today."

"There will be other children."

She turned away so he could not see the rage in her face.

But she couldn't sustain the fury at him. Perhaps this was her moral
failing. (She wasn't much given to worrying about moral failings as a
rule; having a minister as a husband seemed to stir enough religious
thought for one couple.) She lapsed sullenly into silence. Frex nibbled
at his meal.

"It's the devil," said Frex, sighing. "The devil is coming."

"Don't say a thing like that on a day our child is expected!"

"I mean the temptation in Rush Margins! And you know what I mean, Melena!"

"Words are words, and what's said is said!" she answered. "I don't
require all your attention, Frex, but I do need some of it!" She dropped
the skillet with a crash on the bench that stood against the cottage wall.

"Well, and likewise," he said. "What do you think I'm up against today?
How can I convince my flock to turn away from the razzle-dazzle
spectacle of idolatry? I will probably come back tonight having lost to
a smarter attraction. You might achieve a child today. I look forward to
failure." Still, as he said this he looked proud; to fail in the cause
of a high moral concern was satisfying to him. How could it compare with
the flesh, blood, mess, and noise of having a baby?

He stood at last to leave. A wind came up over the lake now, smudging
the topmost reaches of the columns of kitchen smoke. They looked,
thought Melena, like funnels of water swirling down drains in narrowing,
focusing spirals.

"Be well, my love," said Frex, although he had his stern public
expression on, from forehead to toes.

"Yes." Melena sighed. The child punched her, deep down, and she had to
hurry to the outhouse again. "Be holy, and I'll be thinking of you-my
backbone, my breastplate. And also try not to be killed."

"The will of the Unnamed God," said Frex.

"My will too," she said, blasphemously.

"Apply your will to that which deserves it," he answered. Now he was the
minister and she the sinner, an arrangement she did not particularly enjoy.

"Good-bye," she said, and chose the stink and relief of the outhouse
over standing to wave him out of sight as he strode along the road to
Rush Margins.


The Clock of the Time Dragon
----------------------------

Frex was more concerned for Melena than she knew. He stopped at the
first fisherman's hut he saw and spoke with the man at the half-door.
Could a woman or two spend the day and if needed the night with Melena?
It would be a kindness. Frex nodded with a wince of gratitude,
acknowledging without words that Melena was not a great favorite in
these parts.

Then, before continuing around the end of Illswater and over to Rush
Margins, he stopped at a fallen tree and drew two letters from his sash.

The writer was a distant cousin of Frex's, also a minister. Weeks
earlier the cousin had spent rime and valuable ink on a description of
what was being called the Clock of the Time Dragon. Frex prepared
himself for the day's holy campaign by rereading about the idol clock.


I write in haste, Brother Frexspar, to catch my impressions before they
fade.


The Clock of the Time Dragon is mounted on a wagon and stands as high as
a giraffe. It is nothing more than a tottering, freestanding theatre,
punched on all four sides with alcoves and


proscenium arches. On the flat roof is a clockwork dragon, an invention
of green painted leather, silvery claws, ruby jeweled eyes. Its skin is
made of hundreds of overlapping discs of copper, bronze, and iron.
Beneath the flexible folds of its scales is an armature controlled by
clockwork. The Time Dragon circles on its pedestal, flexes its narrow
leathery wings (they make a sound like a bellows), and belches out
sulfurous balls of flaming orange stink.

Below, featured in the dozens of doorways, windows, and porches, are
puppets, marionettes, figurines. Creatures of folk tale. Caricatures of
peasants and royalty alike. Animals and fairies and saints-our unionist
saints, Brother Frexspar, stolen out from underneath us! I get enraged.
The figures move on sprockets. They wheel in and out of doorways. They
bend at the waist, they dance and dawdle and daily with each other.

Who had engendered this Time Dragon, this fake oracle, this propaganda
tool for wickedness that challenged the power of unionism and of the
Unnamed God? The clock's handlers were a dwarf and some narrow-waisted
minions who seemed to have only enough brain capacity among them to pass
a hat. Who else was benefiting besides the dwarf and his beauty boys?

The cousin's second letter had warned that the clock was making its way
next to Rush Margins. It had told a more specific story.

The entertainment began with a thrum of strings and a rattle of bones.
The crowd pushed close, oohing. Within the lighted window of a stage, we
saw a marriage bed, with a puppet wife and husband. The husband was
asleep and the wife sighed. She made a motion with her carved hands to
suggest that her husband was disappointingly small. The audience
shrieked with laughter. The puppet wife went to sleep herself. 'When she
was snoring, the puppet husband sneaked Out of bed.


At this point, up above, the Dragon turned on its base, and pointed its
talons into the crowd, indicating_without a doubt- a humble well digger
named Grine, who has been a faithful if inattentive husband. Then the
dragon reared back and stretched two fingers in a come-hither gesture,
isolating a widow named Letta and her snaggle-toothed maiden daughter.
The crowd hushed and fell away from Crine, Letta, and the blushing maid,
as if they had suddenly been inflicted with running sores.


The Dragon rested again but draped a wing over another archway, which
lit up to reveal the puppet husband, wandering out in the night. Along
came a puppet widow, with sprigged hair

and high color, dragging along a protesting, flinty-toothed daughter.
The kissed the puppet husband, and pulled off his leather trousers. He
was equipped with two full sets of male goods, one in the front and
another hanging off the base of his spine. The widow positioned her
daughter on the abbreviated prong in the front, and herself took
advantage of the morning arrangement in the rear. The three puppets
bucked and rocked, emitting squeals of glee. When the puppet widow and
her daughter were through, they dismounted and kissed the adulterous
puppet husband. Then they kneed him, simultaneously, fore and aft. He
swung on springs and hinges, trying to hold all his wounded parts.


The audience roared. Crine, the actual well digger, sweated drops as big
as grapes. Letta pretended to guffaw, but her daughter had already
disappeared from shame. Before the evening was out, Crine was set upon
by his agitated neighbors and investigated for the grotesque anomaly.
Letta was shunned. Her daughter seems to have vanished entirely. We
suspect the worst.


At least Grine wasn t killed. Yet who can say how our souls have been
stamped by witnessing such a cruel drama? All souls are hostages to
their human envelopes, but souls must decay and suffer at much
indignity, don' t you agree?

Sometimes it seemed to Frex that every itinerant witch and toothless
gibbering seer in Oz who could perform even the most transparent of
spells had seized on the outback district of Wend Hardings to scratch
out a trade. He knew that folks from Rush Margins were humble. Their
lives were hard and their hopes few. As the drought dragged on, their
traditional unionist faith was eroding. Frex was aware that the Clock of
the Time Dragon combined the appeals of ingenuity and magic-and he would
have to call on his deepest reserves of religious conviction to overcome
it. If his congregation should prove vulnerable to the so-called
pleasure faith, succumbing to spectacle and violence-well, what next?

He would prevail. He was their minister. He had pulled their teeth and
buried their babies and blessed their kitchen pots for years now. He had
abased himself in their names. He had wandered with an unkempt

beard and a begging bowl from hamlet to hamlet, leaving poor Melena
alone in the minister's lodge for weeks at a time. He had sacrificed for
them. They couldn't be swayed by this Time Dragon creature. They owed him.

He moved on, shoulders squared, jaw set, stomach in a sour uproar. The
sky was brown with flying sand and grit. The wind rushed high over the
bills with the sound of a tremulous wail, as if pushing through some
fissure of rock, on a ridge beyond any Frex could see.


The Birth of a Witch
--------------------

It was nearly evening by the time Frex had worked up the courage to
enter the ramshackle hamlet of Rush Margins. He was in a deep sweat. He
hit his heels to the ground and pumped his clenched fists, and called
out in a hoarse, carrying tone. "Hist, oh ye of small confidence! Gather
while ye may, for temptation is abroad, to try ye sorely!" The words
were archaic, even ridiculous, but they worked. Here came the sullen
fishermen, dragging their empty nets up from the dock. Here came the
subsistence farmers, whose hardscrabble plots had borne little during
this dry year. Before he had even begun, they all looked guilty as sin.

They followed him to the rickety steps of the canoe repair house. Frex
knew that everyone expected this evil clock to arrive at any instant;
gossip was as contagious as the plague. He yelled at them for their
thirsty anticipation. "Ye are dull as toddlers reaching their hands to
touch the pretty embers! Ye are as if spawn of dragon womb, ready to
suck on teats of fire!" These were time-worn scriptural imprecations and
they fell a little flat tonight; he was tired and not at his best.

"Brother Frexspar," said Bree, the mayor of Rush Margins, "could you
perhaps tone down your harangue until we get a chance to see what fresh
new form temptation might take?"

"You have no mettle to resist new forms," said Frex, spitting.

"Haven't you been our able teacher- these several years?" said Bree.
"We've hardly had such a good chance to prove ourselves against sin!
We're looking forward to-to the spiritual test of it all."

The fishermen laughed and jeered, and Frex intensified his glower, but
at the sound of unfamiliar wheels in the stony ruts of the road, they
all turned their heads and fell silent. He had lost their attention
before he had gotten started.

The clock was being drawn by four horses and escorted by the dwarf and
his cohort of young thugs. Its broad roof was crowned by the dragon. But
what a beast! It looked poised as if ready to spring, as if indeed
invested with life. The skin of the house was decorated in carnival
colors, burnished with gold leaf. The fishermen gaped as it drew near.

Before the dwarf could announce the time of the performance, before the
crowd of youths could draw out their clubs, Frex leaped on the lower
step of the thing-a fold-down stage on hinges. "Why is this thing called
a clock? The only clock face it has is flat, dull, and lost in all that
distracting detail. Furthermore, the hands don't move: Look, see for
yourselves! They're painted to remain at one minute before midnight! All
you'll see here is mechanics, my friends: I know this for a fact. You'll
see mechanical cornfields growing, moons waxing and waning, a volcano to
spew a soft red cloth done up with black and red sequins. With all this
tiktoky business, why not have a pair of circulating arms on the clock
face? Why not? I ask you, I'm asking you, yes, you, Gawnette, and you,
Stoy, and you, Perippa. Why no real clock here?"

They were not listening, Gawnette and Stoy and Perippa, nor were the
others. They were too busy staring in anticipation.

"The answer, of course, is that the clock isn't meant to measure earthly
time, but the time of the soul. Redemption and condemnation time. For
the soul, each instant is always a minute short of judgment.

"One minute short of judgment, my friends! If you died in the next sixty
seconds, would you want to spend eternity in the suffocating depths
reserved for idolaters?"

"Awful lot of noise in the neighborhood tonight," said someone in the
shadows-and the spectators laughed. Above Frex-he whirled to see-from a
little door had emerged a small, yapping puppet dog, its hair dark and
as tightly curled as Frex's own. The dog bounced on a spring, and the
pitch of its chatter was annoyingly high. The laughter grew. Evening
fell harder, and it was less easy for Frex to tell who was laughing, who
now was shouting for him to move aside so they could see.

He wouldn't move, so he was bundled unceremoniously from his perch. The
dwarf gave a poetic welcome. "All our lives are activity without
meaning; we burrow rat-like into life and we squirm rat-like through it
and rat-like we are flung into our graves at the end. Now and then, why
shouldn't we

hear a voice of prophecy, or see a miracle play? Beneath the apparent
sham and indignity of our rat-like lives, a humble pattern and meaning
still applies! Come nearer, my good people, and watch what a little
extra knowledge augurs for your lives! The Time Dragon sees before and
beyond and within the truth of your sorry span of years here! Look at
what it shows you!"

The crowd pushed forward. The moon had risen, its light like the eye of
an angry, vengeful god. "Give over, let me go," Frex called; it was
worse than he had thought. He had never been manhandled by his own
congregation.

The clock unfolded story about a publicly pious man, with lamb's wool
beard and dark curly locks, who preached simplicity, poverty, and
generosity while keeping a hidden coffer of gold and emeralds-in the
double-hinged bosom of a weak-chinned daughter of blue blood society.
The scoundrel was run through with a long iron stake in a most
indelicate way and served up to his hungry flock as Roast Flank of Minister.

"This panders to your basest instincts!" Frex yelled, his arms folded
and his face magenta with fury.

But now that darkness was almost total, someone came up from behind him
to silence him. An arm encircled his neck. He twisted to see which
damned parishioner took such liberties, but all the faces were cloaked
by hoods. He was kneed in the groin and doubled over, his face in the
dirt. A foot kicked him square between the buttocks and his bowels
released. The rest of the crowd, however, was not watching. They were
howling with mirth at some other entertainment put on by the Clock
Dragon. A sympathetic woman in a widow's shawl grabbed his arm and led
him away-he was too fouled, too much in pain to straighten up and see
who it was. "I'll put you down in the root cellar, I will, under a
burlap," crooned the goodwife, "for they'll be after you tonight with
pitchforks, the way that thing is behaving itself They'll look for you
in your lodge, but they won't look in my keeping room."

"Melena," he croaked, "they'll find her-"

"She'll be seen to," said his neighbor. "We women can manage that much,
I guess!"


In the minister's lodge, Melena struggled with consciousness as a pair
of midwives went in and out of focus before her. One was a fishwife, the

other a palsied crone; they took turns feeling tier forehead, peeing
between her legs, and stealing glances at the few beautiful trinkets and
treasures Melena had managed to bring here from Coiwen Grounds.

"You chew that paste of pinlobble leaves, duckie, you do that. You'll be
unconscious before you know it," said the fishwife. "You'll relax, out
will pop the little sweetheart, and all will be well in the morning.
Thought you would smell of rosewater and fairy dew, but you stink like
the rest of us. Chew on, my duckie, chew on."

At the sound of a knock, the crone looked up guiltily from the chest she
was kneeling before and rummaging through. She let the lid close with a
bang and affected a position of prayer, eyes closed. "Enter," she called.

A maiden with tender skin and high color came in. "Oh, I hoped someone
would be here," she said. "How is she?"

"Nearly out and so is the babe," answered the fishwife. "An hour more, I
reckon."

"Well, I'm told to warn you. The men are drunk and on the prowl. They've
been riled up by that dragon of the magic clock, you know, and are
looking for Frex to kill him. The clock said to. They'll likely stagger
out here. We'd better get the wife safely away-can she be moved?"

No, I cannot be moved, thought Melena, and if the peasants find Frex
tell them to kill him good and hard for me, for I never knew a pain so
extraordinary that it made me see the blood behind my own eyes. Kill him
for doing this to me. At this thought, she smiled in a moment of relief
and passed out.

"Let's leave her here and run for it!" said the maiden. "The clock said
to kill her too, and the little dragon she's going to give birth to. I
don't want to get caught."

"We've got our own reputations to uphold," said the fishwife. "We can't
abandon the fancy ladything in mid-delivery. I don't care what any clock
says."

The crone, her head back in the chest, said, "Anyone for some real lace
from Gillikin?"

"There's a hay cart in the lower field, but let's do it now," said the
fishwife. "Come, help me fetch it. You, old mother hag, get your face
out of the linens and come dampen this pretty pink brow. Right-o, now we
go."

A few minutes later the crone, the wife, and the maiden were trundling
the hay cart along a rarely used track through the spindles and bracken
of the autumn woods. The wind had picked up. It whistled over the
treeless foreheads of the Cloth Hills. Melena, sprawled in blankets,
heaved and moaned in unconscious pain.

They heard a drunken mob pass, with pitchforks and torches, and the
women stood silent and terrified, listening to the slurred curses. Then
they pressed on with greater urgency until they came upon a foggy
copse-the edge of the graveyard for unconsecrated corpses. Within it
they saw the blurred outlines of the clock. It had been left here for
safekeeping by the dwarf-no fool he; he could guess this particular
corner of the world was the last place jumpy villagers would seek
tonight. "The dwarf and his boykins were drinking in the tavern too,"
said the maiden breathlessly. "There's no one here to stop us!"

The crone said, "So you've been peering in the tavern windows at the
men, you slut?" She pushed open the door in the back of the clock.

She found a crawl space. Pendulums hung ominously in the gloom. Huge
toothed wheels looked primed to slice any trespasser into sausage
rounds. "Come on, drag her in," said the crone.

The night of torches and fog gave way, at dawn, to broad bluffs of
thundercloud, dancing skeletons of lightning. Glimpses of blue sky
appeared briefly, though sometimes it rained so hard that it seemed more
like mud drops falling than water. The midwives, crawling on hands and
knees out of the back of the clock-wagon, had their little discharge at
last. They protected the infant from the dripping gutter. "Look, a
rainbow," said the senior, bobbing her head. A sickly scarf of colored
light hung in the sky.

What they saw, rubbing the caul and blood off the skin-was it just a
trick of the light? After all, following the storm the grass did seem to
throb with its own color, the roses zinged and hovered with crazy glory
on their stems. But even with these effects of light and atmosphere, the
midwives couldn't deny what they saw. Beneath the spit of the mother's
fluids the infant glistened a scandalous shade of pale emerald.

There was no wail, no bark of newborn outrage. The child opened its
mouth, breathed, and then kept its own counsel. "Whine, you fiend," said
the crone, "it's your first job." The baby shirked its obligations.

"Another willful boy," said the fishwife, sighing. "Shall we kill it?"

"Don't be so nasty to it," said the crone, "it's a girl."

"Hah," said the bleary-eyed maiden, "look again, there's the weather vane."

For a minute they were in disagreement, even with the child naked before
them. Only after a second and third rub was it clear that the child was
indeed feminine. Perhaps in labor some bit of organic effluvia had
become caught and quickly dried in the cloven place. Once toweled, she
was observed to be prettily formed, with a long elegant head, forearms
nicely turned out, clever pinching little buttocks, cunning fingers with
scratchy little nails.

And an undeniable green cast to the skin. There was a salmon blush in
the cheeks and belly, a beige effect around the clenched eyelids, a
tawny stripe on the scalp showing the pattern of eventual hair. But the
primary effect was vegetable.

"Look what we get for our troubles," said the maiden. "A little green
pat of butter. Why don't we kill it? You know what people will say."

"I think it's rotten," said the fishwife, and checked for the root of a
tail, counted fingers and toes. "It smells like dung."

"That is dung you're smelling, you idiot. You're squatting in a cow
pattypie."

"It's sick, it's feeble, that's why the color. Lose it in the puddle,
drown the thing. She'll never know. She'll be out for hours in her
ladylike faints."

They giggled. They cradled the infant in the crook of their arms,
passing it around to test it for weight and balance. To kill it was the
kindest course of action. The question was how.

Then the child yawned, and the fishwife absentmindedly gave it a finger
to nurse on, and the child bit the finger off at the second knuckle. It
almost choked on the gush of blood. The digit dropped out of its mouth
into the mud like a bobbin. The women catapulted into action. The
fishwife lunged to strangle the girl, and the crone and the maiden
flared up in defense. The finger was dug out of the mire and shoved in
an apron pocket, possibly to sew back onto the hand that had lost it.
"It's a cock, she just realized she didn't have one," screeched the
maiden, and

fell on the ground laughing. "Oh, beware the stupid boy first tries to
please himself with her! She'll snip his young sprout off for a souvenir!"

The midwives crawled back into the clock and dropped the thing at its
mother's breast, afraid to consider mercy murder for fear of what else
the baby might bite. "Maybe she'll chop the tit next, that'll bring Her
Drowsy Frailness around quick enough," the crone chuckled. "Though what
a child, that sips blood even before its first suck of mother's milk!"
They left a pipkin of water nearby, and under cover of the next squall
they went squelching away, to find their sons and husbands and brothers,
and berate and beat them if they were available, or bury them if not.

In the shadows, the infant stared overhead at the oiled and regular
teeth of time's clock.


Maladies and Remedies
---------------------

For days Melena couldn't bear to look at the thing. She held it, as a
mother must. She waited for the groundwater of maternal affection to
rise and overwhelm her. She did not weep. She chewed pinlobble leaves,
to float away from the disaster.

It was a she. It was a her. Melena practiced conversions in her thinking
when she was alone. The twitching, unhappy bundle was not male; it was
not neutered; it was a female. It slept, looking like a heap of cabbage
leaves washed and left to drain on the table.

In a panic, Melena wrote to Coiwen Grounds to drag Nanny from her
retirement. Frex went ahead in a carriage to collect Nanny from the way
station at Stonespar End. On the trip back, Nanny asked Frex what was wrong.

"What is wrong." He sighed, and was lost in thought. Nanny realized she
had chosen her words poorly; now Frex was distracted. He began to mumble
in a general way about the nature of evil. A vacuum set up by the
inexplicable absence of the Unnamed God, and into which spiritual poison
must rush. A vortex.

"I mean what is the state of the child!" retorted Nanny explosively.
"It's not the universe but a single child I need to hear about, if I'm
going to be any help! Why does Melena call for me instead of for her
mother? Why is there no letter for her grandfather? He's the Eminent
Thropp, for goodness sakes! Melena can't have forgotten her duties so
thoroughly, or is life out there in the country worse than we thought?"

"It's worse than we thought," said Frex grimly. "The baby-you had better
be prepared, Nanny, so you don't scream-the baby is damaged."

"Damaged?" Nanny's grip on her valise tightened and she looked out over
the red-leafed pearlfruit trees by the side of the road. "Frex, tell me
everything."

"It's a girl," said Frex.

"Damage indeed," said Nanny mockingly, but Frex as usual missed the dig.
"Well, at least the family title's preserved for another generation. Has
she got all her limbs?" -

"Yes."

"Any more than she needs?"

"No."

"Is she sucking?"

"We can't let it. It has extraordinary teeth, Nanny. It has shark's
teeth, or something like."

"Well she won't be the first child to grow on a bottle or a rag instead
of a tit, don't worry about that."

"It's the wrong color," said Frex.

"What color is the wrong color?"

For a few moments Frex could only shake his head. Nanny did not like him
and she would not like him, but she softened. "Frex, it can't be that
bad. There's always a way out. Tell Nanny."

"It's green," he finally said. "Nanny, it's green as moss."

"She's green, you mean. It's a she, for heaven's sake."

"It's not for heaven's sake." Frex began to weep. "Heaven is not
improved by it, Nanny; and heaven does not approve. What are we to do!"

"Hush." Nanny detested weeping men. "It can't be as bad as all that.
There isn't a sniff of low blood in Melena's veins. Whatever blight the
child has will respond to Nanny's treatment. Trust Nanny."

"I trusted in the Unnamed God," sobbed Frex.

"We don't always work at cross purposes, God and Nanny," said Nanny. She
knew this was blasphemous, but she couldn't resist a gibe as long as
Frex's resistance was down. "But don't worry, I won't breathe a word to
Melena's family. We'll sort this all out in a flash, and no one need
know. The baby has a name?"

"Elphaba," he said.

"After Saint Aelphaba of the Waterfall?"

"Yes."

"A fine old name. You'll use the common nickname Fabala, I suppose."

"Who even knows if she'll live long enough to grow into a nickname."
Frex sounded as if he hoped this would be the case.

"Interesting country, are we in Wend Hardings yet?" Nanny asked, to
change the subject. But Frex had folded up inside, barely bothering to
guide the horses onto the correct track. The country was filthy,
depressed, peasant-ridden; Nanny began to wish she had not set out in
her best traveling gown. Roadside robbers might expect to find gold on
such a refined-looking older woman, and they would be right, for Nanny
sported a golden garter stolen years ago from Her Ladyship's boudoir.
What a humiliation, if the garter should turn up these years later on
Nanny's well-turned if aging thigh! But Nanny's fears were unfounded,
for the carriage arrived, without incident, in the yard of the
minister's cottage.

"Let me see the baby first," said Nanny. "It will be easier and fairer
on Melena if I know what we're dealing with." And this wasn't hard to
arrange, as Melena was out cold thanks to pinlobble leaves, while the
baby in a basket on the table wailed softly.

Nanny drew up a chair so she wouldn't hurt herself if she fainted dead
away. "Frex, put the basket on the floor where I can look into it." Frex
obliged, and then went to return the horses and carriage to Bree, who
rarely needed them for mayoral duties but loaned them out to earn a
little political capital.

The infant was wrapped in linens, Nanny saw, and the baby's mouth and
ears were strapped with a sling. The nose looked like a knob of bad
mushroom, poking up for air, and the eyes were open.

Nanny leaned closer. The child couldn't be, what, three weeks old? Yet
as Nanny moved from side to side, looking at the profile of the forehead
from this angle and that, so as to judge the shape of the mind, the
girl's eyes tracked her back and forth. They were brown and rich, the
color of overturned earth, flecked with mica. There was a network of
fragile red lines at each soft angle where the eyelids met, as if the
girl had been bursting the blood threads from the exertion of watching
and understanding.

And the skin, oh yes, the skin was green as sin. Not an ugly color,
Nanny thought. Just not a human color.

She reached out and let her finger drift across the baby's cheek. The
infant flinched, and her backbone arched, and the wrapping, which was

tucked securely around the child from neck to toe, split open like a
husk. Nanny gritted her teeth and was determined not to be cowed. The
baby had exposed herself sternum to groin, and the skin on her chest was
the same remarkable color. "Have you even touched this child yet, you
two?" murmured Nanny. She put her hand palm down on the child's heaving
chest, her fingers covering the almost invisible baby nipples, then slid
her hand down so she could check the apparatus below. The child was wet
and soiled but felt made according to standard design. The skin was the
same miracle of pliant smoothness that Melena had possessed as an Infant.

"Come to Nanny, you horrid little thing you." Nanny leaned to pick the
baby up, mess and all.

The baby swiveled to avoid the touch. Her head beat itself against the
rush bottom of the basket.

"You've been dancing in the womb, I see," said Nanny, "I wonder to whose
music? Such well-developed muscles! No, you're not getting away from me.
Come here, you little demon. Nanny doesn't care. Nanny likes you." She
was lying through her teeth, but unlike Frex she believed some lies were
sanctioned by heaven.

And she got her hands on Elphaba, and settled her on her lap. There
Nanny waited, crooning and every now and then looking away, out the
window, to recover herself and keep from vomiting. She rubbed the baby's
belly to calm the girl down, but there was no calming her down, not yet
anyway.

Melena propped herself up on her elbows in the late afternoon when Nanny
brought a tray with tea and bread. "I have made myself at home," said
Nanny, "and I've made friends with your tiny darling. Now come to your
senses, sweetheart, and let me give you a kiss."

"Oh, Nanny!" Melena allowed herself to be coddled. "Thank you for
coming. Have you seen the little monster?"

"She's adorable," said Nanny.

"Don't lie and don't be soft," said Melena. "If you're going to help you
must be honest."

"If I'm going to help, you must be honest," said Nanny. "We need not go
into it now, but I will have to know everything, my sweet. So we can
decide what's to be done." They sipped their tea, and because

Elphaba had fallen asleep at last, it seemed for a few moments like the
old days at Colwen Grounds, when Melena would come home from afternoon
walks with lithesome young gentry on the make, and boast of their
masculine beauty to a Nanny who pretended she had not noticed.

In fact, as the weeks went on, Nanny noticed quite a few disturbing
things about the baby.


For one thing, Nanny tried to remove the baby's bandages, but Elphaba
seemed intent on biting her own hands off, and the teeth inside that
pretty, thin-lipped mouth were indeed monstrous. She would bite a hole
through the basket if she were left unfettered. She went after her own
shoulder and scraped it raw. She looked as if she were strangling.

"Can't a barber be had to pull the teeth out?" Nanny asked. "At least
until the baby learns some self-control?"

"You're out of your mind," Melena said. "It will be all over the valley
that the little marrow is green. We'll keep the jaw strapped up until we
solve the skin problem."

"However in the world did her skin come green?" Nanny wondered,
stupidly, for Melena blanched and Frex reddened, and the baby held her
breath as if trying to turn blue to please them all. Nanny had to slap
her to make her breathe again.

Nanny interviewed Frex out in the yard. After the double blow of the
birth and his public embarrassment, he was not yet up to professional
engagements and sat whittling praying beads out of oak, scoring and
inscribing them with emblems of the Namelessness of God. Nanny set
Elphaba down inside-she had an unreasonable fear of being overheard by
this infant, and, worse, of being understood-and Nanny sat scooping out
a pumpkin for supper.

"I don't suppose, Frex, that you have green in your family background,"
she began, knowing full well that Melena's powerful grandfather would
have confirmed such a predisposition before agreeing to let his
granddaughter marry a unionist minister-of all the chances she had!

"Our family isn't about money or about earthly power," said Frex, taking
no offense for once. "But I'm descended in a direct line from six
ministers before me, father to son. We're as well regarded in spiritual
circles as Melena's family is in parlors and at the court of Ozma. And
no, there is no green, anywhere. I never heard of such a thing before in
any family."

Nanny nodded and said, "Well all right, I was only asking. I know you're
gooden than goblin martyrs."

"But," Frex said humbly, "Nanny, I think I caused this thing to happen.
My tongue slipped on the day of the birthday-I announced that the devil
was coming. I meant the Clock of the Time Dragon. But suppose those
words unlocked room for the devil?

"The child is no devil!" snapped Nanny. She's no angel either, she
thought, but kept it to herself.

"On the other hand," Frex continued, sounding more secure, "she may have
been cursed by Melena, accidentally, who took my remark the wrong way
and wept about it. Maybe Melena opened up inside herself a window
through which an unattached sprite entered and colored the child."

"On the very day she is to be born?" said Nanny. "That's a capable
sprite. Is your goodness so exalted you attract the truly high-powered
among the Spirits of Aberration?"

Frex shrugged. A few weeks earlier he would have nodded, but his
confidence was shattered with his abject failure in Rush Margins. He did
not dare suggest what he feared: The child's abnormality was a
punishment for his failure to protect his flock from the pleasure faith.

"Well Nanny asked practically, "if through a curse the goods were
damaged, then through what might the ill be overturned?"

"An exorcism," said Frex.

"Are you empowered?"

"If I'm successful at changing her, we'll know that I'm empowered," said
Frex. But now that he had a goal, his spirits brightened. He would spend
some days in fasting, rehearsing prayers, and collecting supplies for
the arcane ritual.

When he was off in the woods, and Elphaba napping, Nanny perched on the
side of Melena's hard marriage mattress.

"Frex wonders if his prediction that the devil was coming caused a
window in you to open, letting an imp pass through to spoil the baby,"
said Nanny. She was crocheting an edge of lace, clumsily; she had never
excelled at piecework, but she liked handling the polished ivory crochet
hook. "I wonder if you opened another window?"

Melena, groggy from pinlobble leaves as usual, arched an eyebrow in
confusion.

"Did you sleep with someone other than Frex?" Nanny asked.

"Don't be mad!" said Melena.

"I know you, honey," said Nanny. "I'm not saying you're not a good wife.
But when you had the boys buzzing around you in your parents' orchard
you changed your perfumed undergarments more than once a day. You were
lusty and sneaky and good at it. I'm not looking down at you. But don't
pretend to me that your appetites weren't healthy."

Melena buried her face in the pillow. "Oh for those days!" she wailed.
"It's not that I don't love Frex! But I hate being better than the local
peasant idiots!"

"Well, now this green child brings you down to their level, you ought to
be pleased," said Nanny meanly.

"Nanny, I love Frex. But he leaves me alone so often! I would kill for
some tinker to pass by and sell me more than a tin coffeepot! I would
pay well for someone less godly and more imaginative!"

"That's a question for the future," said Nanny sensibly. "I'm asking you
about the past. The recent past. Since your marriage."

But Melena's face was vague and blurry. She nodded, she shrugged, she
rocked her head.

"The obvious theory is an elf," said Nanny.

"I wouldn't have sex with an elf!" Melena shrieked.

"No more would I," said Nanny, "but the green does give one pause. Are
there elves in the neighborhood?"

"There's a gaggle of them, tree elves, up over the hill someplace, but
if possible they are more moronic than the fair citizens of Rush
Margins. Really, Nanny, I've never even seen one, or only from a
distance. The idea is repulsive. Elves giggle at everything, do you know
that? One of them falls out of an oak and smashes his skull like a
rotten turnip, and they gather and giggle and then forget about him.
It's insulting of you even to bring it up."

"Get used to it, if we don't find a way out of this quagmire."

"Well, the answer is no."

"Then someone else. Someone handsome enough on the outside, but carrying
a germ that maybe you caught."

Melena looked shocked. She hadn't thought of her own health since
Elphaba was born. Could she be at risk?

"The truth," said Nanny. "We must know."

"The truth," said Melena distantly. "Well, it is unknowable."

"What are you trying to say?"

"I don't know the answer to your question." And Melena explained. Yes,
the cottage was off the beaten track, and of course she never passed
more than the curtest greetings with local farmers and fishermen and
thickheads. But more travelers took to the hills and woods than you
would credit. Often she had sat, listless and lonely, while Frex was off
preaching, and she had found comfort in giving passersby a simple meal
and a buoyant conversation.

"And more?"

But on those boring days, Melena muttered, she had taken to chewing
pinlobble leaves. When she would awake, because the sun was setting or
Frex was there frowning or grinning at her, she remembered little.

"You mean you indulged in adultery and you don't even have the benefit
of a good saucy memory about it?" Nanny was scandalized.

"I don't know that I did!" said Melena. "I wouldn't choose to, I mean
not if I was thinking clearly. But I remember once when a tinker with a
funny accent gave me a draft of some heady brew from a green glass
bottle. And I had rare expansive dreams, Nanny, of the Other
World-cities of glass and smoke-noise and color-I tried to remember."

"So you could well have been raped by elves. Won't your grandfather be
pleased to learn how Frex is taking care of you."

"Stop!" cried Melena.

"Well, I don't know what's to be done!" Nanny lost her temper at last.
"Everyone's being irresponsible! If you can't remember whether your
marriage vows have been broken or not, there's not much good in acting
like an offended saint."

"We can always drown the baby and start over."

"Just try drowning that thing," muttered Nanny. "I pity the poor lake
asked to take her in."

Later, Nanny went through Melena's small collection of medicines-herbs,
drops, roots, brandies, leaves. She was wondering, without much hope, if
she could invent something that might cause the girl's skin to blanch.
In the back of the chest Nanny found the green glass bottle spoken of by
Melena. The light was bad and her eyes weren't strong, but she

could make out the words MIRACLE ELIXIR on a piece of paper pasted to
the front.

Though she had a native skill in healing, Nanny was unable to come up
with a skin-changing potion. Bathing the child in cow's milk didn't make
the skin white, either. But the child would not allow herself to be
lowered into a pail of lake water; she twisted like a cat in panic.
Nanny kept on with the cow's milk. It left a horrid sour stink if she
did not rub it off thoroughly with a cloth.

Frex organized an exorcism. It involved candles and hymns. Nanny watched
from a distance. The man was beady-eyed, perspiring with effort even
though the mornings were colder and colder. Elphaba slept in her binding
cloth in the middle of the carpet, oblivious to the sacrament.

Nothing happened. Frex fell, exhausted and spent, and cradled his green
daughter within the crook of his arm, as if finally embracing the proof
of some undisclosed sin. Melena's face hardened.

There was only one thing left to try. Nanny gathered the courage to
bring it up on the day she was to leave back for Colwen Grounds.

"We see that peasant treatments don't work," said Nanny, "and spiritual
intercession has failed. Do you have the courage to think about sorcery?
Is there someone local who could magic the green venom out of the child?"

Frex was up and lashing out at Nanny, swinging his fists. Nanny fell
backward off her stool, and Melena bobbed about her, shrieking. "How
dare you!" cried Frex. "In this household! Isn't this green girl insult
enough? Sorcery is the refuge of the amoral; when it isn't out-and-out
charlatanism, it is dangerously evil! Contracts with the demons!"

Nanny said, "Oooh, preserve me! You fine, fine man, don't you know
enough to fight fire with fire?"

"Nanny, enough," said Melena.

"Hitting a feeble old woman," said Nanny, hurt. "Who only tries to help."

The next morning Nanny packed her valise. There was nothing more that
she could do, and she wasn't willing to live the rest of her life with a
fanatical hermit and a ruined baby, even for the sake of Melena.

Frex drove Nanny back to the inn at Stonespar End, for the coachand-four
to take her home. Nanny knew Melena might still think about

killing the child, but somehow she doubted it. Nanny held her valise to
her ample bosom, fearing bandits again. Inside her valise was hidden her
gold garter (she could always claim it had been planted there without
her knowledge, whereas it would have been hard to claim it had been
planted on her leg in the same circumstances). She also had squirreled
away the ivory crochet hook, three of Frex's prayer beads because she
liked the carvings, and the pretty green glass bottle left behind by
some itinerant salesman selling, apparently, dreams and passion and
somnolence.

She didn't know what she thought. Was Elphaba devil's spawn? Was she
half-elf? Was she punishment for her father's failure as a preacher, or
for her mother's sloppy morals and bad memory? Or was she merely a
physical ailment, a blight like a misshapen apple or a five-legged calf?
Nanny knew her worldview was foggy and chaotic, pestered by demons,
faith, and folk science. It didn't escape her attention, however, that
both Melena and Frex had believed uncompromisingly that they would have
a boy. Frex was the seventh son of a seventh son, and to add to that
powerful equation he was descended from six ministers in a row.
VVhatever child of either (or any) sex could dare follow in so
auspicious a line?

Perhaps, thought Nanny, little green Elphaba chose her own sex, and her
own color, and to hell with her parents.


The Quadling Glassblower
------------------------

For one short, wet month, early in the next year, the drought lifted.
Spring tipped in like green well water, frothing at the hedges, bubbling
at the roadside, splashing from the cottage roof in garlands of ivy and
stringflower. Melena went about the yard in a state of mild undress, so
that she could feel the sun on her pale skin and the deep warmth she had
missed all winter. Strapped in her chair in the doorway, Elphaba, now a
year and a half old, hit her breakfast minnow with the bowl of her
spoon. "Oh, eat the thing, don't mash it," said Melena, but mildly.
Since the child's chin-sling had been removed, mother and daughter had
begun to pay some attention to each other. To her surprise, Melena
sometimes found Elphaba endearing, the way a baby should be.

This view was the only thing she had seen since leaving the elegant
mansion of her family, the only thing she would ever gaze upon again-
the windswept surface of Illswater, the distant dark stone cottages and
chimneys of Rush Margins on the other side, the hills lying in a torpor
beyond. She would go mad; the world was nothing but water and want. If a
frolic of elves scampered through the yard she would leap on them for
company, for sex, for murder.

"You father is a fraud," she said to Elphaba. "Off finding himself all
winter, leaving me with only you for company. Eat that breakfast, for
you'll get no more if you throw it on the ground."

Elphaba picked up the fish and threw it on the ground.

"Your father is a charlatan," continued Melena. "He used to be very good
in bed for a religious man, and this is how I know his secret. Holy men
are supposed to be above earthly pleasures, but your father enjoyed his
midnight wrestling. Once upon a time! We must never tell him we know
he's a humbug, it would break his heart. We don't want

to break his heart, do we?" And then Melena burst into a high peal of
laughter.

Elphaba's face was unsmiling, unchanging. She pointed to the fish.

"Breakfast. Breakfast in the dirt. Breakfast for the bugs," Melena said.
She dropped the collar of her spring robe a little lower and the pink
yoke of her bare shoulders gyrated. "Shall we go walk by the edge of the
lake today and maybe you'll drown?"

But Elphaba would never drown, never, because she would not go near the
lake.

"Maybe we'll go out in a boat and tip over!" Melena shrieked.

Elphaba cocked her head to one side as if listening for some part of her
mother not intoxicated with leaves and wine.

The sun swept out from behind a cloud. Elphaba scowled. Melena's robe
dropped lower. Her breasts worked their way out from between the dirty
ruffles of the collar.

Look at me, thought Melena, showing my breasts to the child I couldn't
give milk to for fear of amputation. I who was the rose of Nest
Hardings, I who was the beauty of my generation! And now I am reduced to
company I don't even want, my own squirming thorny little girl. She is
more grasshopper than girl, with those angular little thighs, those
arching eyebrows, those poking fingers. She's about the business of
learning like any child, but she takes no delight in the world: She
pushes and breaks and nibbles on things without any pleasure. As if she
has a mission to taste and measure all the disappointments of life. In
which Rush Margins is amply supplied. Mercy from the Unnamed God, she's
a creep, she is. She is.

"Or we might take a walk in the woods today and pick the last of the
winter berries." Melena was full of guilt at her lack of motherly
feeling. "We can put them in a pie. Can we put them in a pie? Shall we,
honey?"

Elphaba didn't speak yet, but she nodded, and began to wiggle to get
down. Melena started a clapping game Elphaba took no notice of. The
child grunted and pointed to the ground, and arched her long elegant
legs to illustrate her desire. Then she gestured to the gate leading
from the kitchen garden and the hen yard.

There was a man at the uprights of the gate, leaning, shy and
hungry-looking, with skin the color of roses at twilight: a dusky,
shadowy red. He had a couple of leather satchels on his shoulders and
back, and a

walking staff, and a dangerously handsome, hollow-looking face. Melena
screeched and caught herself, directed her voice to a lower register. It
had been so long since she had spoken to anyone but a whining toddler.
"Good glory, you startled us!" she cried. "Are you searching for some
breakfast?" She had lost the social touch. For instance, her breasts
should not be staring at him so. Yet she did not clasp her gown.

"Please to forgive a sudden appearance by a strange foreigner at Lady's
gate," said the man.

"Forgiven, of course," she said impatiently. "Come in where I can see
you-come in, come in!"

Elphaba had seen so few other people in her life that she hid one eye
behind her spoon, and peeked with the other eye.

The man approached. His movements showed the clumsiness of exhaustion.
He was large of ankle and thick of foot, slender about the waist and
shoulders, and thick again in the neck-as if he had been made on a
lathe, and worked too briefly at the extremities. His hands, letting
down the satchels, seemed like beasts with minds of their own. They were
outsized and splendid.

"Traveler not to know where he is," said the man. "Two nights to cross
the hills from Downhill Comings. To look for the inn at Three Dead
Trees. To rest."

"You're lost, you've veered," said Melena, deciding not to be perplexed
at his scrambled words. "No matter. Let me fix you a meal and you can
tell me your story." Her hands were at her hair, which once used to be
thought precious as spun brass. At least it was clean.

The man was sleek and fit. When he removed his cap his hair fell out in
greasy hanks, sunset red. He washed at the pump, stripping off his
shirt, and Melena noticed it was nice to see a waist on a man again
(Frex, bless him, had run to plumpness in the year-and-some since
Elphaba's birth). Were all Quadlings this delicious dusty rose color?
The man's name, Melena learned, was Turtle Heart, and he was a
glassblower from Owels, in little-known Quadling Country.

She bundled up her breasts at last, reluctantly. Elphaba squawked to be
let loose, and without so much as flinching the visitor unbuckled her
and swept her in the air and caught her again. The child crowed with
surprise, even delight, and Turtle Heart repeated the trick. Melena took
advantage of his concentration on the brat to scoop up the uneaten
minnow from the dirt and rinse it off. She plopped it among the eggs and
mashed tar root, hoping that Elphaba would not suddenly learn to speak
and embarrass her. It would be just like the child to do that.

But Elphaba was too charmed by this man to fuss or complain. She didn't
even whine when Turtle Heart finally came to the bench and sat to eat.
She crawled between his sleek, hairless calves (for he had shucked off
his leggings) and she moaned some private tune with a satisfied smirk on
her face. Melena found herself jealous of a female not yet two years
old. She wouldn't have minded sitting on the ground between Turtle
Heart's legs.

"I've never met a Quadling before," she said, too loudly, too brightly.
The months of solitude had made hem forget hem manners. "My family would
never have Quadlings in to dine-not that there were many, or even any
for all I know, in the farmlands around my family's estate. The stories
make out that Quadlings were sneaky and incapable of telling the truth."

"How can a Quadling to answer such a charge if a Quadling is given
always to lie?" He smiled at her.

She melted like butter on warm bread. "I'll believe anything you say."
He told her of the life in the outreaches of Ovvels, the houses rotting
gently into the swamp, the harvest of snails and murkweed, the customs
of communal living and ancestor worship. "So you believe your ancestors
are with you?" she prodded. "I don't mean to be nosy but I've become
interested in religion despite myself."

"Does Lady to believe ancestors are with her?"

She could hardly focus on the question, so bright were his eyes, and so
wonderful it was to be called Lady. Her shoulders straightened. "My
immediate ancestors couldn't be farther away," she admitted. "I mean my
parents- they're still living, but so uninteresting to me they might as
well be dead."

"When dead they may to visit Lady often."

"They are not welcome. Go away." She laughed, shooing. "You mean ghosts?
They'd better not. That's what I'd call the worst of both worlds-if
there is an Other Land."

"There is an otherworld," he said with certainty.

She felt chilled. She scooped Elphaba up and hugged her tightly. Elphaba
sagged as if boneless in her arms, neither fussing nor returning the
hug, just falling limp from the novelty of being touched. "Are you a
seer?" said Melena.

"Turtle Heart to blow glass," he said. He seemed to mean that as an answer.

Melena was suddenly reminded of the dreams she used to have, of exotic
places she knew she was too dull to invent. "Married to a minister, and
I don't know that I believe in an otherworld," she admitted. She hadn't
meant to say that she was married, although she supposed the child
implicated her.

But Turtle Heart had finished talking. He put down his plate (he had
left the minnow) and he took from his satchels a small pot, a pipe, and
some sacks of sand and soda ash and lime and other minerals. "Might
Turtle Heart to thank Lady for her welcome?" he asked; she nodded.

He built up the kitchen fire and sorted and mixed his ingredients, and
arranged utensils, and cleaned the bowl of his pipe with a special rag
folded in its own pouch. Elphaba sat clumplike, her green hands on her
green toes, curiosity on her sharp pinched face.

Melena had never seen glass blown, just as she had never seen paper
made, cloth woven, or logs hewn from tree trunks. It seemed as marvelous
to her as the local stories of the traveling clock that had hexed her
husband into the professional paralysis from which he still hadn't quite
escaped-though he tried.

Turtle Heart hummed a note through his nose or the pipe as he blew an
irregular bulb of hot greenish ice. It steamed and hissed in the air. He
knew what to do with it; he was a wizard of glass; Melena had to hold
Elphaba back to keep her from burning her hands as she reached for it.

In what seemed like no time at all, in what felt like magic, the glass
had gone from being semiliquid and abstract to a hardening, cooling reality.

It was a smooth, impure circle, like a slightly oblong plate. All the
while Turtle Heart worked with it, Melena thought of her own character,
going from youthful ether to hardening shell, transparently empty.
Breakable, too. But before she could lose herself in remorse, Turtle
Heart took her two hands and passed them near, but not touching, the
flat surface of the glass.

"Lady to talk with ancestors," he said. But she would not struggle to
connect with old boring dead people in the Other Land, not when his huge
hands covered hers. She breathed through her nose to suppress the smell
of breakfast in an unwashed mouth (fruit and one glass of wine, or was
it two?). She thought she might well faint.

"Look in glass," he urged her. She could only look at his neck and his
raspberry-honey-colored chin.

He looked for her. Elphaba came and steadied herself with a small hand
on his knee and peered in, too.

"Husband Is near," said Turtle Heart. Was this prophecy through a glass
dish or was he asking her a question? But he went on: "Husband is
traveling on a donkey and to bring elderly woman to visit you. Is
ancestor to visit?"

"Is old nursemaid, probably," Melena said. She was sloping downward into
his crippled syntax, in unabashed sympathy. "Can you really to see that
in there?"

He nodded. Elphaba nodded too, but at what?

"How much time do we have before he gets here?" she asked.

"Till this evening."

They did not speak another word until sunset. They banked the fire and
hooked Elphaba to a harness, and sat her down in front of the cooling
glass, which they hung on a string like a lens or a mirror. It seemed to
mesmerize and calm her; she did not even gnaw absentmindedly at her
wrists or toes. They left the door to the cottage open so that, from
time to time, they could peer out from the bed to check on the child
who, in the glare of a sunny day, would not be able to focus her eyes to
see in the house shadows, and who anyway never turned to look. Turtle
Heart was unbearably beautiful. Melena dragon-snaked with him, covered
him with her mouth, poured him in her hands, heated and cooled and
shaped his luminosity. He filled her emptiness.

They were washed, and dressed, with supper mostly made, when the donkey
brayed a half mile down the lake. Melena blushed. Turtle Heart was back
at the pipe, blowing again. Elphaba turned and looked in the direction
of the donkey's serrated statement. Her lips, which always looked almost
black against the new-apple color of her skin, twisted tight, chewed
against each other. She bit her lower lip as if thinking, but she did
not bleed; she had learned to manage the teeth somewhat, through trial
and error. She put her hand on the shining disc. The glass circlet
caught the last blue of the sky, until it looked like a magic mirror
showing nothing but silver-cold water within.


Geographies of the Seen and the Unseen
--------------------------------------

All the way from Stonespar End, where Frex met her coach, Nanny
complained. Lumbago, weak kidneys, fallen arches, aching gums, sore
haunches. Frex wanted to say, And how about your swollen ego? Though he
had been out of circulation for a while, he knew such a remark would be
rude. Nanny flounced and petted herself, clinging determinedly to her
seat until they arrived at the lodge near Rush Margins.

Melena greeted Frex with affecting shyness. "My breastplate, my
backbone," she murmured. She was slender after a hard winter, her
cheekbones more prominent. Her skin looked scoured as if by an artist's
scratch brush-but she had always had the look of an
etching-in-the-flesh. She was usually bold with her kisses and he found
her reticence alarming until he realized there was a stranger in the
shadows. Then, after introductions, Nanny and Melena fussed to get a
meal on the table, and Frex put out some oats for the sorry nag who had
to pull the carriage. When this was done he went to sit in the spring
evening light and to meet his daughter again.

Elphaba was cautious around him. He found in his pouch a trinket he'd
whittled for her, a little sparrow with a cunning beak and upraised
wings. "Look, Fabala," he whispered (Melena hated the derivative, so he
used it: it was his and Elphaba's private bond, the father-daughter pact
against the world). "Look what I found in the forest. A little maplewood
bird."

The child took the thing in her hands. She touched it softly, and put
its head in her mouth. Frex steeled himself to hear the inevitable
splintering, and to hold back his sigh of disappointment. But Elphaba
did not bite. She sucked the head and looked at it again. Wet, it had
greater life.

"You like it," Frex said.

She nodded, and began to feel its wings. Now that she was distracted,
Frex could draw her between his knees. He nuzzled his crinkly-bearded
chin into her hair she smelled like soap and wood smoke, and the char on
toast, a good healthy smell-and he closed his eyes. It was good to be home.

He had spent the winter in an abandoned shepherd's hut on the windward
slope of Griffon's Head. Praying and fasting, moving deeper inside and
then further outside himself. And why not? At home, he had felt the
scorn of the people of the whole claustrophobic valley of Illswater;
they had connected the Time Dragon's slanderous story of a corrupt
minister with the arrival of a deformed child. They had drawn their own
conclusions. They avoided his chapel services. So a sort of hermit's
life, at least in small intervals, had seemed both penance and
preparation for something else, something next-but what?

He knew this life wasn't what Melena had originally expected, mar-tying
him. With his bloodlines, Frex had looked primed for an elevation to
proctor or even, eventually, bishop. He had imagined the happiness
Melena would have as a society dame, presiding over feast day dinners
and charity balls and episcopal teas. Instead-he could see her in the
firelight, grating a last, limp winter carrot onto a pan of fish-here
she wasted away, a partner in a difficult marriage on a cold, shadowy
lakeshore. Frex had a notion that she wasn't sorry to see him go off
from time to time, so that she could be glad to see him come back.

As he ruminated, his beard tickled Elphaba's neck, and she snapped the
wings off her wooden sparrow. She sucked on it like a whistle. Twisting
away from him, she ran to a glass lens hanging from the projecting cave,
and swatted at it.

"Don't, you'll break that!" said her father.

"She cannot to break that." The traveler, the Quadling, came from the
sink where he had been washing up.

"She just turned her toy into a cripple," Frex said, pointing at the
ruined bridling.

"She is herself pleased at the half things," Turtle Heart said. "I
think. The little girl to play with the broken pieces better."

Frex didn't quite get it, but nodded. He knew that months away from the
human voice made him clumsy at first. The boy from the inn,

who had climbed Griffon's Head to deliver Nanny's request to be picked
up at Stonespar End, had obviously thought Frex a wild man, grunting and
unkempt. Frex had had to quote a little of the Ozlad to indicate some
sort of humanity-"Land of green abandon, land of endless leaf"-it was
all that would come to him.

"Why can't she break it?" asked Frex.

"Because I do not to make it to be broken," answered Turtle Heart. But
he smiled at Frex, not aggressively. And Elphaba wandered around with
the shiny glass as if it were a toy, catching shadows, reflections,
lights on its imperfect surface, almost as if she were playing.

"Where are you going?" asked Frex, just as Turtle Heart was saying,
"Where are you from?"

"I'm a Munchkinlander," said Frex.

"I to think all Munchkins to be shorter than I or you."

"The peasants, the farmers, yes," Frex said, "but anyone with bloodlines
worth tracing married into height somewhere along the way. And you?
You're from Quadling Country."

"Yes," said the Quadling. His reddish hair had been washed and was
drying into an airy nimbus. Frex was glad to see Melena so generous as
to offer a passerby water to bathe in. Perhaps she was adjusting to
country life after all. Because, mercy, a Quadling ranked about as low
on the social ladder as it was possible to get and still be human.

"But I to understand," said the Quadling. "Ovvels is a small world.
Until I to leave, I am not to know of hills, one beyond the other and
from the spiny backbones a world so wide around. The blurry far away to
hurt my eyes, for I cannot to make it seen. Please sir to describe the
world you know."

Frex picked up a stick In the soil he drew an egg on its side. "What
they taught me in lessons," he said. "Inside the circle is Oz. Make an

he did so, through the oval-"and roughly speaking, you have a pie in
four sections. The top Is Gillikin Full of cities and universities and
theatres, civilized life, they say. And industry." He moved clockwise.
"East, is Munchkinland, where we are now. Farmland, the bread basket of
Oz, except down in the mountainous south-these strokes, in the district
of Wend Hardings, are the hills you're climbing." He bumped and
squiggled. "Directly south of the center of Oz is Quadling Country.
Badlands, I'm

told--marshy, useless, infested with bugs and feverish airs." Turtle
Heart looked puzzled at this, but nodded. "Then west, what they call
Winkie Country. Don't know much about that except it's dry and unpopulated."

"And around?" said Turtle Heart.

"Sandstone deserts north and west, fleckstone desert east and south.
They used to say the desert sands were deadly poison; that's just
standard propaganda. Keeps invaders from Ev and Quox from trying to get
in. Munchkinland is rich and desirable farming territory, and Gillikin's
not bad either. In the Glikkus, up here"-he scratched lines in the
northeast, on the border between Gillikin and Munchkinland-"are the
emerald mines and the famous Glikkus canals. I gather there's a dispute
whether the Glikkus is Munchkinlander or Gillikinese, but I have no
opinion on that."

Turtle Heart moved his hands over the drawing in the dirt, flexing his
palms, as if he were reading the map from above. "But here?" he said.
"What is here?"

Frex wondered if he meant the air above Oz. "The realm of the Unnamed
God?" he said. "The Other Land? Are you a unionist?"

"Turtle Heart is glassblower," said Turtle Heart.

"I mean religiously."

Turtle Heart bowed his head and didn't meet Frex's eye. "Turtle Heart is
not to know what name to call this."

"I don't know about Quadlings," said Frex, warming to a possible
convert. "But Gillikinese and Munchkinlanders are largely unionist.
Since Lurlinist paganism went out. For centuries, there have been
unionist shrines and chapels all over Oz. Are there none in Quadling
Country?"

"Turtle Heart does not to recognize what is this," he said.

"And now respectable unionists are going in droves over to the pleasure
faith," said Frex, snorting, "or even tiktokism, which hardly even
qualifies as a religion. To the ignorant everything is spectacle these
days. The ancient unionist monks and aunts knew their place in the
universe-acknowledging the life source too sublime to be named-and now
we sniff up the skirts of every musty magician who comes along.
Hedonists, anarchists, solipsists! Individual freedom and amusement is
all! As if sorcery had any moral component! Charms, alley magic,
industrial-strength sound and light displays, fake shape-changers!
Charlatans, nabobs of necromancy, chemical and herbal wisdoms, humbug
hedonists!

Selling their bog recipes and crone aphorisms and schoolboy spells! It
makes me sick."

Turtle Heart said, "Shall Turtle Heart to bring you water, shall Turtle
Heart to lie you down?" He put fingers soft as calfskin on the side of
Frex's neck. Frex shivered and realized he had been shouting. Nanny and
Melena were standing in the doorway with the pan of fish, silent.

"It's a figure of speech, I'm not sick," he said, but he was touched at
the concern the foreigner had shown. "I think we'll eat."

And they did. Elphaba ignored her food except to prod the eyes out of
the baked fish and to try to fit them onto her wingless bird. Nanny
grumbled good-naturedly about the wind off the lake, her chills, her
backbone, her digestion. Her gas was apparent from more than a few feet
away and Frex moved, as discreetly as possible, to be upwind. He found
himself sitting next to the Quadling on the bench.

"So is all that clear to you?" Frex pointed a fork at the map of Oz.

"Is Emerald City to be where?" said the Quadling, fish bones poking out
from between his lips.

"Dead center," Frex said.

"And there is Ozma," said Turtle Heart.

"Ozma, the ordained Queen of Oz, or so they say," Frex said, "though the
Unnamed God must be ruler of all, in our hearts."

"How can unnamed creature to rule-" began Turtle Heart.

"No theology at dinner," sang out Melena, "that's a house rule dating
from the start of our marriage, Turtle Heart, and we obey it."

"Besides, I still harbor a devotion to Lurline." Nanny made a face in
Frex's direction. "Old folks like me are allowed to. Do you know about
Lurline, stranger?"

Turtle Heart shook his head.

"If we have no theology then we surely have no arrant pagan nonsense-"
began Frex, but Nanny, being a guest and invoking a touch of deafness
when it suited her, plowed on.

"Lurline is the Fairy Queen who flew over the sandy wastes, and spotted
the green and lovely land of Oz below. She left her daughter Ozma to
rule the country in her absence and she promised to return to Oz in its
darkest hour."

"Hah!" said Frex.

"No hahs at me." Nanny sniffed. "I'm as entitled to my beliefs as you
are, Frexspar the Godly. At least they don't get me into trouble as
yours do."

"Nanny, govern your temper," said Melena, enjoying this.

"It's rubbish," said Frex. "Ozma rules in the Emerald City, and anyone
who's seen her, or paintings of her, knows that she's from Gillikinese
stock. She's got the same broad band of forehead, the slightly gapped
front teeth, the frenzy of curling blond hair, the quick shifts of mood-
usually into anger. All characteristic of Gillikinese peoples. You've
seen her, Melena, tell him."

"Oh, she is elegant in her way," Melena admitted.

"The daughter of a Fairy Queen?" said Turtle Heart.

"More nonsense," said Frex.

"Not nonsense!" snapped Nanny.

"They think she bears herself again and again like a phoenix," said
Frex. "Hah and double hah. There've been three hundred years of very
different Ozmas. Ozma the Mendacious was a dedicated aunt, who lowered
rulings in a bucket down from the topmost chamber in a cloister tower.
She was as mad as a bung beetle. Ozma the Warrior conquered the Glikkus,
at least for a time, and commandeered the emeralds with which to
decorate the Emerald City. Ozma the librarian did nothing but read
genealogies for her whole life long. Then there was Ozma the Scarcely
Beloved, who kept pet ermines. She overtaxed the farmers to begin the
road system of yellow brick that they're still struggling to complete,
and much luck to them, I say."

"Who is Ozma now?" asked Turtle Heart.

"Actually," said Melena, "I had the pleasure to meet the last Ozma at a
social season in the Emerald City-my grandfather the Eminent Thropp had
a town house. The winter I was fifteen I was brought out into society
there. She was Ozma the Bilious, because of a bad stomach. She was the
size of a lake narwhal, but she dressed beautifully. I saw her with her
husband, Pastorius, at the Oz Festival of Song and Sentiment."

"She is no longer the Queen?" asked Turtle Heart, confused.

"She died in an unfortunate accident involving some rat poison," said Frex.

"Died," said Nanny, "or her spirit moved next into her child, Ozma
Tippetarius."

"The current Ozma is just about the age of Elphaba," said Melena, "so
her father, Pastorius, is the Ozma Regent. The good man will rule until
Ozma Tippetarius is old enough to take the throne."

Turtle Heart shook his head. Frex was annoyed because they had spent so
much time talking about the worldly ruler and ignored the eternal realm,
and Nanny lapsed into a bout of indigestion for which they all were very
sorry, olfactorily speaking.

Anyway, even being irritated, Frex was glad to be home. Because of the
beauty of Melena-she was almost glowing tonight as the sun left the
sky-and because of the surprise of Turtle Heart, smiling and
un-self-conscious next to him. Maybe because of Turtle Heart's religious
emptiness, which Frex found challenging and appealing, almost tempting.

"Then there's the dragon beneath Oz, in a hidden cavern," Nanny was
saying to Turtle Heart. "The dragon who has dreamt the world, and who
will burn it in flames when he awakes-"

"Shut up that superstitious codswallop!" shouted Frex.

Elphaba, on all fours, advanced on the uneven planks of the flooring.
She bared her teeth-as if she knew what a dragon was, as if she were
pretending-and roared. Her green skin made her more persuasive, as if
she were a dragon child. She roared again-"Oh sweetheart, don't," said
Frex-and she peed on the floor, and sniffed her urine with satisfaction
and disgust.


Child's Play
------------

One afternoon toward the end of summer, Nanny said, "There's a beast
abroad. I've seen it at dusk several times, lurking about in the ferns.
What sorts of creatures are native to these hills anyway?"

"You don't find anything larger than a gopher," said Melena. They were
at the side of the brook, working at laundry. The small spring wetness
had long since ceased, and the drought had clamped its hand down again.
The stream was only a thin trickle. Elphaba, who would not come near the
water, was stripping a wild pear tree of its stunted crop. She clung to
the trunk with her hands and out-turned feet, and threw her head around,
catching the sour fruit with her teeth and then spitting seeds and stem
on the ground.

"This is larger than a gopher," said Nanny. "Trust me. Have you bears?
It could have been a bear cub, though it moved mighty fast."

"No bears. There's the rumor of rock tigers on the felltop, but they
tell me not a single one has been sighted in ages. And rock tigers are
notoriously skittish and shy. They don't come near human dwellings."

"A wolf then? Are there wolves?" Nanny let the sheet droop in the water.
"It could have been a wolf."

"Nanny, you think you're in the desert. Wend Hardings is desolate, I
agree, but it's a tame barrenness for all that. You're alarming me with
your wolf and your tiger talk."

Elphaba, who would not speak yet, made a low growl in the pocket of her
throat.

"I don't like it," said Nanny. "Let's finish up and dry these things
back at the house. Enough is enough. Besides, I have other things I want
to say to you. Let's give the child to Turtle Heart and let's go off
somewhere." She shuddered. "Somewhere safe."

"What you have to say you can say within earshot of Elphaba," said
Melena. "You know she doesn't understand a word."

"You confuse not speaking with not listening," said Nanny. "I think she
understands plenty."

"Look, she's smearing fruit on her neck, like a cologne-"

"Like a war paint, you mean."

"Oh, dour Nanny, stop being such a goose and scrub those sheets harder.
They're filthy."

"I need hardly ask whose sweat and leakage this is .

"Oh you, no you needn't ask, but don't start moralizing at me-"

"But you know Frex is bound to notice sooner or later. These energetic
afternoon naps you take-well, you always had an eye for the fellow with
a decent helping of sausage and hard-boiled eggs-"

"Nanny, come, this is none of your affair."

"More's the pity," said Nanny, sighing. "Isn't aging a cruel hoax? I'd
trade my hard-won pearls of wisdom for a good romp with Uncle Flagpole
any day."

Melena flipped a handful of water in Nanny's face to shut her up. The
older woman blinked and she said, "Well, it's your garden, plant there
what you choose and reap what you may. What I want to talk about is the
child, anyway."

The girl was now squatting behind the pear tree, eyes narrowed at
something in the distance. She looked, thought Melena, like a sphinx,
like a stone beast. A fly even landed on her face and walked across the
bridge of her nose, and the child didn't flinch or squirm. Then,
suddenly, she leaped and pounced, a naked green kitten after an
invisible butterfly.

"What about her?"

"Melena, she needs to get used to other children. She'll start talking a
little bit if she sees that other chicks are talking."

"Talking among children is an overrated concept."

"Don't be glib. You know she needs to get used to people other than us.
She's not going to have an easy time of it anyhow, unless she sheds her
greeny skin as she grows up. She needs the habits of conversation. Look,
I give her chores to do, I warble nursery rhymes at her. Melena, why
doesn't she respond like other children?"

"She's boring. Some children just are."

"She ought to have other pups to play with. They would infect her with a
sense of fun."

"Frankly, Frex doesn't expect a child of his to be interested in fun,"
said Melena. "Fun is counted for overmuch in this world, Nanny. I agree
with him on that."

"So your dragon-snaking with Turtle Heart is what-devotional exercises?"

"I said don't be catty, please!" Melena focused on the toweling, beating
it with annoyance. Nanny would go on about this; she was up to
something. And Nanny had hit the nail on the head. There crept Turtle
Heart into the cool shadows of the cottage, when Melena was tired from a
morning's work in the vegetable garden. He covered her with a sense of
holiness, and it was more than her undergarments that would drop away
from her when they tumbled panting onto the bedclothes. She would lose
her sense of shame.

She knew this did not follow conventional reason. Nevertheless, should a
tribunal of unionist ministers call her to court for adultery, she would
tell the truth. Somehow Turtle Heart had saved her and restored her
sense of grace, of hope in the world. Her belief in the goodness of
things had been dashed into bits when little green Elphaba crawled into
being. The child was extravagant punishment for a sin so minor she
didn't even know if she had committed it.

It was not the sex that saved her, though the sex was mighty vigorous,
even frightening. It was that Turtle Heart didn't blush when Frex showed
up, that he didn't shrink from beastly little Elphaba. He set up shop in
the side yard, blowing glass and grinding it, as if life had brought him
here just to redeem Melena. Wherever else he might have been heading had
been forgotten.

"Very well, you old interfering cow," said Melena. "For the sake of
argument, what do you propose?"

"We must take Elphie to Rush Margins and find some small children for
her to play with."

Melena sat back on her haunches. "But you have to be jesting!" she
cried. "Slow and deliberate as Elphaba is, at least she's unharmed here!
I may not be able to summon much maternal warmth, but I feed her, Nanny,
and I keep her from hurting herself! How cruel, to inflict the out-

side world on her! A green child will be an open invitation for scorn
and abuse. And children are wickeder than adults, they have no sense of
restraint. We might as well go throw her in the lake she's so terrified of."

"No no no," said Nanny, putting her fat hands on her own knees; her
voice was thick with determination. "Now I am going to argue with you
about this, Melena, until you give in. Time in its wisdom will bring you
around to my way of thinking. Listen to me. Listen to me. You are only a
pampered little rich girl who flitted about from music lessons to dance
lessons with neighborhood children equally rich and stupid as you. Of
course there's cruelty. But Elphaba must learn who she is and she must
face down cruelty early. And there will be less of it than you expect."

"Don't play Nanny Goddess with me. I won't have it."

"Nanny is not giving up," said Nanny, just as fiercely. "I have a
long-range view of your happiness as well as hers, and believe me, if
you don't give her the weapons and armor with which she can defend
herself against scorn, she'll make your life miserable as hers will be
miserable."

"And the weapons and armor she'll learn from the dirty urchins of Rush
Margins?"

"Laughter. Fun. Teasing. Smiling."

"Oh, please."

"I'm not above blackmailing you about this, Melena said Nanny. "I can
wander into Rush Margins this afternoon and find where Frex is trying to
hold his revival meeting and whisper a few words to him. While Frex is
busy cranking up the religious ardor of Rush Margins sluggards, would he
be interested in knowing what his wife is up to with Turtle Heart?"

"You are a miserable old fiend! You are a foul, unethical bully!" cried
Melena.

Nanny grinned with pride. "No later than tomorrow," she said, "we'll go
in tomorrow and get her life started."


In the morning a stiff, unforgiving wind galloped from the heights. It
picked up old leaves and the remains of failed crops and kitchen
gardens. Nanny pulled a shawl across her rounded shoulders and tugged a
bonnet over her brow. Her eyes were full of marginal beasts; she kept
turning to see a slinking cat-thing or a vixen dissolve into clots of
skeleton leaves and debris.

Nanny found a blackthorn staff as if to aid her over stones and ruts,
but she hoped to be ready to wield it against some hungry beast. "The
land is dry and cold," she observed, almost to herself. "And so little
rain! Of course the big beasts would be driven from the hills. Let's
walk together, no running ahead, little green."

They made their way in silence: Nanny fearful, Melena angry at having to
miss her afternoon dalliance, and Elphaba like a windup toy, one foot
solidly in front of the other. The margins of the lake had receded, and
some of the crude docks were now walkways over pebble and drying
greenrot, with the water pulled back beyond their reach.

Gawnette's was a dark stone cottage with a roof of moldering thatch.
Because of a bad hip, Gawnette was no good at hauling the fishing nets
or at kneeling over the wasting vegetable gardens. She had a mess of
small children in various stages of undress, squawling and sulking and
trotting around the dirty yard in a little pack. She looked up as the
minister's family approached.

"Good day, and you must be Gawnette," said Nanny brightly. She was
pleased to open the gate and be safely inside the garden, even of this
hovel. "Brother Frexspar told us we would find you here."

"Sweet Lurline, what they say is true!" said Gawnette, making a holy
sign against Elphaba. "I thought it vicious lies, and here she is!"

The children had slowed to a walk. They were boys and girls, brown-faced
and white, all of them filthy, all of them keen on something new. Though
they kept walking, playing some game of endurance or make-believe, their
eyes never left Elphaba.

"You know this is Melena-of course you do-and I am their Nanny," said
Nanny. "We're pleased to meet you, Gawnette." She slid a glance at
Melena and bit her upper lip and nodded.

"Very pleased, I'm sure," said Melena stonily.

"And we need some advice, for you come well recommended," said Nanny.
"The little girl has problems, and the best of our thinking just doesn't
seem to bring forth any good ideas."

Gawnette leaned forward, suspicious.

"The child is green," whispered Nanny confidentially. "You may not have
noticed, being attracted by her charm and warmth. Of course, we know the
good people of Rush Margins wouldn't let a thing like that

bother them. But because she is green, she is shy. Look at her. Little
frightened spring turtle. We need to draw her out, make her happier, and
we don't know how."

"She's green all right," said Gawnette. "No wonder useless Brother
Frexspar retired from his preaching for so long!" She threw back her
head and laughed raucously, unkindly. "And he's only now had the nerve
to take it up again! Well, that's balls if ever I heard it!"

"Brother Frexspar," interrupted Melena coldly, "reminds us of the
scriptures-'No one knows the color of a soul.' Gawnette, he suggested I
remind you of that very text."

"Did he now," mumbled Gawnette, chastised. "Well then, what do you want
with me?"

"Let her play, let her learn, let her come here and be minded by you.
You know more than we do," said Nanny.

The cunning old cow, thought Melena. She is trying that rarest of
strategies, telling the truth, and making it sound plausible. They sat down.

"I don't know if they'd take to her," said Gawnette, holding out a
while. "And you know my hip doesn't let me hop up and stop them when
they get going."

"Let's see. And of course there'd be some payment, some cash, Melena
fully agrees," said Nanny. The barren vegetable plot had caught her
attention. This was poverty. Nanny gave Elphaba a push. "Well, go on in,
child, and see what's what."

The girl didn't budge, didn't blink. The children came near to her.
There were five boys and two girls. "What an ugly pug," said one of the
older boys. He touched Elphaba on the shoulder.

"Play nicely now," said Melena, about to leap up, but Nanny kept her
hand out to say, Stay down.

"Tag, let's tag," said the boy, "who's the greenily?"

"Not it, not it!" The other children shrieked, and rushed in to

brush Elphaba with their hands, and then raced away. She stood for a

minute, unsure, her own hands down and clenched, and then she ran a

few steps, and stopped.

"That's the way, healthful exercise," said Nanny, nodding. "Gawnette,
you're a genius."

"I know my chicks," said Gawnette. "Don't say I don't."

Herdlike, the children rushed in again, tapping and darting away, but
the girl would not chase them. So they neared her once more.

"Is it true you got a Quadling muckfrog staying with you too?" said
Gawnette. "Is it true he only eats grass and dung?"

"I beg your pardon!" cried Melena.

"That's what they say, is it true?" said Gawnette.

"He's a fine man."

"But he's a Quadling?"

"Nell-yes."

"Don't bring him around here then, they spread the plague," said Gawnette.

"They spread no such thing," snapped Melena.

"No throwing, Elphie dear," called Nanny.

"I'm only saying what I hear. They say at night that Quadlings fall
asleep and their souls climb out through their mouths and go abroad."

"Stupid people say a lot of stupid things." Melena was curt and too
loud. "I have never seen his soul climb out of his mouth while he was
sleeping, and I've had plenty of opportunity"

"Darling, no rocks," shrilled Nanny. "None of the other children have
rocks."

"Now they do," observed Gawnette.

"He is the most sensitive person I've ever met," said Melena.

"Sensitive isn't much use to a fishwife," said Gawnette. "How about to a
minister and a minister's wife?"

"Now there's blood, how vexing," said Nanny. "Children, let Elphie up so
I can wipe that cut. And I didn't bring a rag. Gawnette?"

"Bleeding is good for them, makes them less hungry," said Gawnette.

"I rate sensitive a good sight higher than stupid," said Melena, seething.

"No biting," said Gawnette to one of the little boys, and then, seeing
Elphaba open her mouth to retaliate, raised herself to her feet, bad hip
or no, and screamed, "no biting, for the love of mercy!"

"Aren't children divine?" said Nanny.


Darkness Abroad
---------------

Every second or third day Nanny took Elphaba by the hand and waddled
the shadowy road to Rush Margins. There Elphaba mingled with the
greasy children under the eyes of sullen Gawnette. Frex had moved out
again (was it confidence or desperation?)-he was scaring miserable
hamlets with his frenzied beard and his collected opinions on
faith. Gone for eight, ten days at a time. Melena practiced piano
arpeggios on a tuneless mock keyboard Frex had carved for her, to
perfect scale.

Turtle Heart seemed to wilt and parch as autumn came on. Their
afternoons of dalliance began to lose the heat of urgency, and developed
in warmth. Melena had always appreciated the attentions of Frex, and
been attentive to him, but somehow his body had not been as supple as
Turtle Heart's. She drifted off to sleep with Turtle Heart's mouth on
one of her nipples and his hands-his big hands-roaming like sentient
pets. She imagined that Turtle Heart divided his body when her eyes were
closed; his mouth roamed, his cock rose and nudged and leaned, his
breath was somewhere other than his mouth, hissing elegantly into her
ear, wordlessly, his arms were like stirrups.

Still she didn't know him, not the way she knew Frex; she could not see
through him as she could most people. She put this down to his majestic
bearing, but Nanny, ever watchful, remarked one evening that it was just
that his ways were the ways of a Quadling and Melena had never even
acknowledged that he came from a different culture than she did.

"Culture, what's culture," Melena said lazily. "People are people."

"Don't you remember your nursery rhymes?" Nanny put aside her sewing
(with relief) and recited.

"Boys study, girls know,

That's the way that lessons go.

Boys learn, girls forget,

That's the way of lessons yet.

Gillikinese are sharp as knives,

Munchkinlanders lead corny lives,

Glikkuns beat their ugly wives,

Winkies swarm in sticky hives.

But the Quadlings, Oh the Quadlings,

Slimy stupid curse-at-godlings,

Eat their young and bury their old

A day before their bodies get cold.

Give me an apple and I'll say it again.

- "What do you know of him?" Nanny asked. "Is he married? Why did he
leave Lower Slimepit or wherever he comes from? Naturally, it's not my
place to ask such personal questions-"

"Since when did you ever know your place or keep it, either?"

"When Nanny leaves her place, believe me, you'll know," said Nanny.

One evening in early autumn, for fun they built up a fire in the yard.
Frex was home and good-humored, and Nanny was thinking of heading back
to Colwen Grounds, which made Melena good-humored too. Turtle Heart put
together a supper, a distasteful goulash of small sour new apples and
cheese and bacon.

Frex was feeling expansive. The effect of that blasted tiktok
contrivance, the Clock of the Time Dragon, had been wearing off at last-
thank the Unnamed God-and the graceless poor had been turning out to
hear Frex harangue them. A two-week mission at Three Dead Trees had been
a success. Frex had been rewarded with a small wallet of brass coins and
barter tokens, and the glow of devotion or even lust on the face of more
than one penitent.

"Perhaps our time here is limited," said Frex, sighing with contentment
and clasping his arms behind his head-the typical male response to
happiness, thought Melena: to predict its demise. Her husband went

on. "Perhaps the road from Rush Margins leads us on to higher things,
Melena. Grander stations in life."

"Oh please," she said. "My family rose from humble beginnings for nine
generations, to produce me with my ankles in the mud out here in the
middle of nowhere. I don't believe in higher things."

"I mean the lofty ambitions of the spirit. I don't mean to storm the
Emerald City and become personal confessor to the Ozma Regent."

"Why not put yourself forward to be confessor to Ozma Tippetarius?"
Nanny asked. She could see herself rising in courtly Emerald City
society if Frex had such a position. "So what if the royal baby is only,
what, two years old? Three? So we have government by a male regent
again. It's only for a limited engagement-like most male encounters.
You're young still-she'll grow up-you'll be well-placed to influence policy.

"I don't care about ministering to anyone in court, not even an Ozma the
Fanatically Devout." Frex lit a sallowwood pipe. "My mission is to the
downtrodden and humble."

"Goodness should to travel to Quadling Country," said Turtle Heart.
"Downtrodden there."

Turtle Heart didn't often speak of his past, and Melena remembered
Nanny's gibe about her lack of curiosity. She waved the pipe smoke away
and said, "Why did you leave Ovvels anyway?"

"Horrors," he said.

Elphaba, who had been hoping for ants to crawl across the grinding stone
so she could mash them with a rock, looked up across the shallow basin
of the stone. The others waited for Turtle Heart to go on. Melena's
heart lifted uneasily-she had a sudden premonition of things changing
right here, this very evening, this most splendid gentle night, things
going awry just when they had managed to settle down.

"What sort of horrors?" said Frex.

"I feel a chill. I'll get a shawl," said Melena.

"Or minister to Pastorius! The Ozma Regent! Why not, Frex?" Nanny said.
"I'm sure with Melena's family connections you could twist an invitation-"

"Horrors," said Elphaba.

It was her first word, and it was greeted with silence. Even the


moon, a lambent bowl among the trees, seemed to pause.

"Horrors?" Elphaba said again, looking around. Though her mouth was
serious, her eyes glowed; she had realized her own accomplishment. She
was nearly two years old. The big sharp teeth in her mouth could not
keep her words locked inside her anymore. "Horrors," she tried in a
whisper. "Horrors."

"Come to Nanny, darling. Come sit on my lap and hush for a while."

She obeyed, but sat forward, apart from Nanny's cushiony bosom, allowing
Nanny's arms to ring around her waist but no contact more than that. She
stared at Turtle Heart and waited.

And Turtle Heart said in an awed voice, "Turtle Heart is thinking the
child to speak for the first time."

"Yes," said Frex, exhaling a ring of smoke, "and she's asking about the
horrors. Unless you don't care to tell

"Turtle Heart to say little. Turtle Heart to work in glass, and to leave
words for the Goodness and the Lady and the Nanny. And now for the Girl."

"Say a little, though. Since you brought it up."

Melena shivered; she hadn't gone for the shawl. She could not move. She
was heavy as stone.

"Workers from the Emerald City and other places, they to come to
Quadling Country. They to look and taste and sample the air, the water,
the soil. They to plan the highway. Quadlings to know this is wasted
tune and wasted effort. They do not to listen to Quadling voices."

"Quadlings aren't road engineers, I suspect," said Frex evenly.

"The country is delicate," said Turtle Heart. "In Ovvels the houses to
float between trees. Crops to grow on small platforms hooked by ropes.
Boys to dive in shallow water for vegetable pearls. Too many trees and
there is not enough light for crops and health. Too few trees and the
water rises and roots of plants floating on top cannot to stretch to
soil. QuadlIng Country is poor country but beauty rich. It only to
support life by careful planning and cooperation."

"So resistance to the Yellow Brick Road-"

"Is only part of the story. Quadlings cannot to convince road builders,
who want to build up dikes of mud and stone and to cut Quadling Country
in pieces. Quadlings to argue, and to pray, and to testify, and cannot
to win with words."

Frex held his pipe in his two hands and watched Turtle Heart speak. Frex
was drawn to him; Frex was always drawn to intensity.

"Quadlings consider to fight," said Turtle Heart. "Because they think
this is only the start. When the builders to test soil and to sift
water, they to learn of things Quadlings are smart for ever, but
Quadlings to keep still."

"Things you know?"

"Turtle Heart to speak of rubies," he said with a great sigh. "Rubies
under the water. Red as pigeon blood. Engineers to say: Red corundum in
bands of crystalline limestone under swamp. Quadlings to say: The blood
of Oz."

"Like the red glass you make?" said Melena.

"Ruby glass to come by adding gold chloride," said Turtle Heart. "But
Quadling Country to sit atop real deposits of real rubies. And the news
is sure to go to the Emerald City with the builders. What to follow is
horror upon horror."

"How do you know?" snapped Melena.

"To look in glass," said Turtle Heart, pointing to the roundel he had
made as a toy for Elphaba, "is to see the future, in blood and rubies."

"I don't believe in seeing the future. That smacks of the pleasure
faith," said Frex fiercely. "The fatalism of the Time Dragon. Pfaah. No,
the Unnamed God has an unnamed history for us, and prophecy is merely
guesswork and fear."

"Fear and guesswork is enough to make Turtle Heart to leave Quadling
Country, then," said the Quadling glassblower without apology.
"Quadlings do not to call their religion a pleasure faith, but they to
listen to signs and to watch for messages. As the water to run red with
rubies it will to run with the blood of Quadlings."

"Nonsense!" Frex fussed, red himself. "They need a good talking-to."

"Besides, isn't Pastorius a simpleton?" said Melena, who alone of them
could claim an informed opinion on the royal house. "What will he

do until Ozma is of age but ride the hunt, and eat Munchkinlander
pastries, and fuck the odd housemaid on the side?"

"The danger is a foreigner," said Turtle Heart, "not a home-grown king
or queen. The old women, and the shamans, and the dying: They to see a
stranger king, cruel and mighty."

"What is the Ozma Regent doing, planning roadworks into that godforsaken
mire anyway?" Melena asked.

"Progress," said Frex, "same as the Yellow Brick Road through
Munchkinland. Progress and control. The movement of troops. The
regularization of taxes. Military protection."

"Protection from whom?" said Melena.

"Ahh," said Frex, "always the important question."

"Ahh," said Turtle Heart, almost in a whisper.

"So where are you going?" said Frex. "Not that you need leave here, of
course. Melena loves having you around. We all do."

"Horrors," said Elphaba.

"Hush now," said Nanny.

"Lady is kind and Goodness is kind to Turtle Heart. Who did not mean to
stay more than a day. Turtle Heart was on his way to the Emerald City
and to get lost. Turtle Heart to hope to beg audience with Ozma-"

"Ozma Regent, now," interjected Frex.

"-and to plead mercy for Quadling Country. And to warn of brutal stranger-"

"Horrors," said Elphaba, clapping her hands together in delight.

"The child to remind Turtle Heart of his duties," he said. "To talk of
it brings duties back out of the pain of the past. Turtle Heart to
forget. But when words are to speak in the air, actions must to follow."

Melena glared hatefully at Nanny, who had dropped the girl on the ground
and begun to busy herself with collecting the supper dishes. See what
comes of prying and nosiness, Nanny? See? Just the dissolution of my
only earthly happiness, that's all. Melena turned her face from her
horrid child, who seemed to be smiling, or was that wincing? She looked
at her husband with despair. Do something, Frex!

"Perhaps this is the higher ambition we seek," he was murmuring. "We
should travel to Quadling Country, Melena. We should leave the

luxury of Munchkinland and try ourselves in the fire of a truly needy
situation."

"The luxury of Munchkinland?" Melena's voice was screechy.

"When the Unnamed God speaks through a lowly vessel," began Frex,
gesturing at Turtle Heart, who was looking desperate again, "we can
choose to hear or we can choose to harden our hearts-"

"Well, hear this, then," said Melena, "I'm pregnant, Frex. I can't
travel. I can't move. And with a new infant to watch as well as Elphaba
to raise, it's too much to suggest tramping around Mudland."

After the stillness had lost some of its steam, she continued, "Well, I
didn't intend to tell you like this."

"Congratulations," said Frex coldly.

"Horrors," said Elphaba to her mother. "Horrors, horrors, horrors."

"That's enough thoughtless chatter for one night," said Nanny, taking
charge. "Melena, you will catch a chill sitting out here. Summer nights
are turning colder again. Come inside and let's let that be that."

But Frex got himself up and went to kiss his wife. It was not clear to
anyone whether he suspected that Turtle Heart was the father, nor was it
clear to Melena which one, her husband or her lover, was the father. She
didn't actually care. She just didn't want Turtle Heart to leave, and
she hated him fiercely for being so suddenly riven with moral feeling
for his miserable people.

Frex and Turtle Heart conversed in low voices that Melena could not make
out. They sat by the fire with their heads low together, and Frex had
his arm on Turtle Heart's shaking shoulders. Nanny readied Elphaba for
bed, left her outside with the men, and came to sit on Melena's bed with
a glass of hot milk on a tray and a small bowl of medicinal capsules.

"Well, I knew this was coming," said Nanny calmly. "Drink the milk,
dear, and stop sniveling. You're behaving like a child again. How long
have you known?"

"Oh, six weeks," said Melena. "I don't want milk, Nanny, I want my wine."

"You'll drink milk. No more wine till the baby's born. You want another
disaster?"

"Drinking wine doesn't change the skin color of embryos," said Melena.
"I may be a dolt but I know that much about biology."

"It's bad for your frame of mind, nothing more and nothing less. Drink
the milk and swallow one of these capsules."

"what for?

"I did what I told you I d do said Nanny in a conspiratonal voice Last
fall I poked around the Lower Quarter of our fair capital on your

half-"

The young woman was suddenly engaged Nanny you didn't t' How .-r!
Weren't you terrified?"

"Of course I was. But Nanny loves you, however stupid you are. I found a
store marked with the secret insignia of the alchemist's trade." She
wrinkled her nose in recollection of the smell of rotting ginger and cat
piss. "I sat down with a saucy-looking old biddy from Shiz, a crone
named Yackle, and drank the tea and upended the cup so she could read
the leaves. Yackle could barely see her own hand, much less read the
picture."

"A real professional," Melena said dryly.

"Your husband doesn't believe in predictions, so keep your voice down.
Anyway, I explained about the greenness of your first child, and the
difficulty of knowing exactly why it had happened. We don't want a
recurrence, I said. So Yackle ground up some herbs and minerals, and
toasted it with oil of gomba, and said some pagan prayers and for all I
know she spit in it, I didn't watch too closely. But I paid for a nine
months' supply, to be begun as soon as you're sure you've conceived.
We're a month late maybe, but this'll be better than nothing. I have
supreme confidence in this woman, Melena, and you should too."

"Why should I?" said Melena, swallowing the first of nine capsules. It
tasted like boiled marrow.

"Because Yackle predicted greatness for your children," said Nanny. "She
said Elphaba will be more than you credit, and your second will follow
suit. She said not to give up on your life. She said history waits to be
written, and this family has a part in it."

"What does she say about my lover?"

"You are a pest," said Nanny. "She said to rest and not to worry. She
gives her blessing. She is a filthy whore but she knows what she's
talking about." Nanny didn't mention that Yackle was certain the next
child would be a girl too. There was too much chance Melena would try to
abort her,

and Yackle sounded quite sure that history belonged to two sisters, not
a single girl.

"And you got home safely? Did anyone suspect?"

"Who would suspect innocent old Nanny of trading in illegal substances
in the Lower Quarter?" laughed Nanny. "I do my knitting and mind my own
business. Now go to sleep, my love. Nix to the wine for the next few
months, and stay the course with this medicine, and we'll have for you
and Frex a decent, healthy child, which will provide no end of recovery
for your marriage."

"My marriage is perfectly fine," said Melena, snuggling down under the
covers-the capsule had a kick, but she didn't want Nanny to know-"as
long as we don't go wading off into the muddy sunset."

"The sun sets in the west, not in the south," said Nanny soothingly. "It
was a masterly stroke to bring up the pregnancy tonight, my dear. I
wouldn't come to visit you if you went paddling off into Quadling
Country, by the way. I'm fifty years old this year, you know. There are
some things Nanny is really too old to do."

"Well nobody better go anywhere," said Melena, and began to fall asleep.

Nanny, pleased with herself, glanced out the window again as she
prepared to retire. Frex and Turtle Heart were still deep in
conversation. Nanny was sharper than she let on; she had seen Turtle
Heart's face when he was remembering the threat to his people. It had
opened like a hen's egg, and the truth had fluttered and wobbled out of
it just as naive as a yellow chick. And as fragile. No wonder Frex was
sitting nearer to the beleaguered Quadling than Nanny thought was
altogether decent. But there seemed no end of oddity to this family.

"Send the girl in so I can put her down," she called from the window,
partly to interrupt their intimacy.

Frex looked around. "She's in, isn't she?"

Nanny glanced. The child was not given to hiding games, neither here nor
with the brats in the village. "No, isn't she with you?"

The men turned and looked. Nanny thought she saw a blur of movement in
the blue shadows of the wild yew. She stood up and held on to the window
ledge. "Well, find her. It's the prowling hour."

"There's nothing here, Nanny, it's your overactive imagination,"

drawled Frex, but the men were up quickly, and looking around.

"Melena, dear, don't sleep yet; do you know where Elphaba is? Did


you see her wander off?" said Nanny.

Melena struggled to lift herself to one elbow. She stared through her
hair and her inebriation. "What are you on about?" she asked in a slur,
"who is wandering off?"

"Elphaba," Nanny said. "Come on, you better get up. Where could be.
Where could she be." She started to help Melena up, but it was

happening too slowly, and Nanny's heart was beginning to beat fast. She


fixed Melena's hands to the bedposts, saying, "Now come on, Melena, this
is not good," and she reached for her blackthorn staff.

"Who?" said Melena. "Who's lost?"


The men were calling in the purple gloaming. "Fabala! Elphaba! Elphie!
Little frog!" They circled out away from the yard, away from the dying
embers of the dinner fire, peering and hitting at the lower branches of
bushes. "Little snake! Lizard girl! Where are you?"

"It's the thing, the thing has come down from the hills, whatever it is!
cried Nanny.

"There's no thing, you old fool," said Frex, but he leaped more and more
vigorously from rock to rock behind the lodge, smacking branches aside.
Turtle Heart stood still, his hands out to the sky, as if trying to
receive the faint light of the first stars into his palms.

"Is it Elphaba," called Melena from the door, finally focusing, and
stepping forward in her nightgown. "Is the child gone?"

"She's wandered off, she's been taken," said Nanny fiercely, "these two
idiots were flirting like schoolgirls, and the beast from the hills is
abroad!"

Melena called, her words mounting in pitch and terror, "Elphaba!
Elphaba, you listen to me! Come here this instant! Elphaba!"

The wind alone answered.

"She is not far," said Turtle Heart after a moment. In the deepening
dark he was almost invisible while Melena in her white poplin glowed
like an angel, as if lit from within. "She is not far, she just is not
here."

"What the devil do you mean," Nanny said, weeping, "with your riddles
and your games?"

Turtle Heart turned. Frex had come back to him, to throw an arm around
him and hold him up, and Melena came forward to his other side.

He sagged for a minute, as if fainting; Melena cried out in fright. But
Turtle Heart straightened up, and began to move forward, and they headed
toward the lake.

"Not the lake, not that girl, she can't abide water, you know that,"
called Nanny, but she was rushing forward now, using her staff to feel
the ground ahead of her so she wouldn't stumble.

This is the end, thought Melena. Her brain was too foggy to think
anything else, and she said it again and again, as if to prevent it from
being true.

This is the beginning, thought Frex, but of what?

"She is not far, she is not here," said Turtle Heart again.

"Punishment for your wicked ways, you two-faced hedonists," Nanny said.

The ground sloped toward the still, receded margin of the lake. First at
their feet, then at their waists and higher, the beached dock rose, like
a bridge to nowhere, ending In air.

Beneath the dock in the dry shadows there were eyes.

"Oh, sweet Lurline," whispered Nanny.

Elphaba was sitting under the dock wIth the looking glass that Turtle
Heart had made. She held it in two hands, and stared at it with one eye
closed. She peered, she squinted; her open eye was distant and hollow.

Reflection from the starlight off the water, thought Frex, hoped Frex,
but he knew the bright vacant eye was not lit by starlight.

"Horrors," murmured Elphaba.

Turtle Heart tumbled to his knees. "She sees him coming," he said
thickly, "she sees him to come; he is to come from the air; is arriving.
A balloon from the sky, the color of a bubble of blood: a huge crimson
globe, a ruby globe: he falls from the sky. The Regent is fallen. The
House of Ozma is fallen. The Clock was right. A minute to judgment."

He fell over, almost into Elphaba's small lap. She didn't seem to notice
him. Behind her was a low growl. There was a beast, a feiltop tiger, or
some strange hybrid of tiger and dragon, with glowing orangey eyes.
Elphaba was sitting in its folded forearms as if on a throne.

"Horrors," she said again, looking without binocular vision, staring at
the glass in which her parents and Nanny could make out nothing but
darkness. "Horrors."


Book 2 - Gillikin


Galinda
-------

1
-------
Wittica, Settica, Wiccas and Turning, Red Sand, Dixxi House, change at
Dixxi House for Shin; stay aboard this coach for all points East;
Tenniken, Brox Hall, and all destinations to Traum"-the conductor paused
to catch his breath-"next stop Wittica, Wittica next!"

Galinda clutched her parcel of clothes to her breast. The old goat who
sprawled on the seat across from her was missing the Wittica stop. She
was glad that trains made passengers sleepy. She didn't want to keep
avoiding his eye. At the last minute before she was to board the train,
her minder, Ama Clutch, had stepped on a rusty nail and, terrified of
the frozen-face syndrome, had begged permission to go to the nearest
surgery for medicines and calming spells. "I can surely get myself to
Shiz alone," Galinda had said coldly, "don't bother with me, Ama
Clutch." And Ama Clutch hadn't. Galinda hoped that Ama Clutch would
suffer a little frozenness of jaw before being well enough to show up in
Shin and chaperone Galinda through whatever was to come.

Her own chin was set, she believed, to imply a worldly boredom with
train travel. In fact she had never been more than a day's carriage ride
away from her family home in the little market town of Frottica. The
railway line, laid down a decade ago, had meant that old dairy farms
were being cut up for country estates for the merchants and
manufacturers of Shiz. But Galinda's family continued to prefer rural
Gilhikin, with its fox haunts, its dripping dells, its secluded ancient
pagan temples to Lurline. To them, Shin was a distant urban threat, and
even the convenience of rail transportation hadn't tempted them to risk
all its complications, curiosities, and evil ways.

Galinda didn't see the verdant world through the glass of the carriage;
she saw her own reflection instead. She had the nearsightedness of

youth. She reasoned that because she was beautiful she was significant,
though what she signified, and to whom, was not clear to her yet. The
sway of her head made her creamy ringlets swing, catching the light,
like so many jostling stacks of coins. Her lips were perfect, as pouted
as an opening maya flower, and colored as brilliantly red. Her green
traveling gown with its inset panels of ochre musset suggested wealth,
while the black shawl draping just so about the shoulders was a nod to
her academic inclinations. She was, after all, on her way to Shin
because she was smart.

But there was more than one way to be smart.

She was seventeen. The whole town of Frottica had seen her off. The
first girl from the Pertha Hills to be accepted at Shin! She had written
well in the entrance exams, a meditation on Learning Ethics from the
Natural World. ("Do Flowers Regret Being Plucked for a Bouquet? Do the
Rains Practice Abstinence? Can Animals Really Choose to Be Good? Or: A
Moral Philosophy of Springtime.") She had quoted excessively from the
Oziad, and her rapturous prose had captivated the board of examiners. A
three-year fellowship to Crage Hall. It wasn't one of the better
colleges- those were still closed to female students. But it was Shiz
University.

Her companion in the compartment, waking up when the conductor came back
through, stretched his heels as he yawned. "Would you be so kind as to
reach my ticket, it's in the overhead," he said. Galinda stood and found
the ticket, aware that the bearded old thing was eyeing her comely
figure. "Here you are," she said, and he answered, "Not to me, dearie,
to the conductor. Without opposable thumbs, I have no hope of managing
such a tiny piece of cardboard."

The conductor punched the ticket, and said, "You're the rare beast that
can afford to travel first class."

"Oh," said the goat, "I object to the term beast. But the laws still
allow my traveling in first class, I presume?"

"Money's money," said the conductor, without ill will, punching
Galinda's ticket and returning it to her.

"No, money's not money," said the goat, "not when my ticket cost double
what the young lady's did. In this case, money is a visa. I happen to
have it."

"Going up to Shin, are you?" said the conductor to Galinda, ignoring the
goat's remark. "I can tell by that academic shawl."

"Oh well, it's something to do," said Galinda. She didn't care to talk
to conductors. But when he continued along down the carriage, Galinda
found that she liked even less the baleful look that the goat was giving
her.

"Do you expect to learn anything at Shin?" he asked.

"I have already learned not to speak to strangers."

"Then I will introduce myself and we will be strangers no longer. I am
Dillamond."

"I am disinclined to know you."

"I am a Fellow of Shin University, on the Faculty of Biological Arts."

You are a shabby dresser, even for a goat, Galinda thought. Money isn't
everything. "Then I must overcome my natural shyness. My name is
Galinda. I am of the Arduenna Clan on my mother's side."

"Let me be the first to welcome you to Shin, Glinda. This is your first
year?"

"Please, it is Galinda. The proper old Gillikinese pronunciation, if you
don't mind." She could not bring herself to call him sir. Not with that
horrid goatee and the tatty waistcoat that looked cut from some public
house carpet.

"I wonder what you think of the Wizard's proposed Banns on travel?" The
goat's eyes were buttery and warm, and frightening. Galinda had never
heard of any Banns. She said as much. Dillamond-was it Doctor
Dillamond?-explained in a conversational tone that the Wizard had
thoughts of restricting Animal travel on public conveyances except in
designated transports. Galinda replied that animals had always enjoyed
separate services. "No, I am speaking of Animals," said Dillamond.
"Those with a spirit."

"Oh, those," said Galinda crudely. "Well, I don't see the problem."

"My, my," said Dillamond. "Don't you indeed?" The goatee quivered; he
was irritated. He began to hector her about Animal Rights. As things now
stood, his own ancient mother couldn't afford to travel first class, and
would have to ride in a pen when she wanted to visit him in Shin. If the
Wizard's Banns went through the Hall of Approval, as they were likely to
do, the goat himself would be required by law to give up the privileges
he had earned through years of study, training, and saving. "Is that
right for a creature with a spirit?" he said. "From here to there, there
to here, in a pen?"

"I quite agree, travel is so broadening," said Galinda. They endured the
rest of the trip, including the change across the platform at Dixxi
House, in a frosty silence.


Seeing her fright at the size and bustle of the terminus at Shin,
Dillamond took pity and offered to engage a carriage to take her to
Crage Hall. She followed him, looking as unmortified as she could
manage. Her luggage came behind, on the backs of a couple of porters.

Shin! She tried not to gawp. Everyone hustling on business, laughing and
hurrying and kissing, dodging carriages, while the buildings of Railway
Square, brownstone and bluestone and covered with vine and moss, steamed
softly in the sunlight. The animals-and the Animals! She had scarcely
ever come across even the odd chicken squawking philosophically in
Frottica-but here was a quartet of tsebras at an outdoor cafe, dressed
flashily in black-and-white satin stripes on the bias to their inborn
design; and an elephant on its hind legs directing traffic; and a tiger
dressed up in some sort of exotic religious garb, a kind of monk or
maunt or nun or something. Yes, yes, it was Tsebras, and Elephant, and
Tiger, and she supposed Goat. She would have to get used to enunciating
the capital letters or else she would show off her country origins.

Mercifully, Dillamond found her a carriage with a human driver, and
directed him to Crage Hall and paid him in advance, for which Galinda
had to come up with a weak smile of appreciation. "Our paths will cross
again," said Dillamond, gallantly if curtly, as if putting forth a
prophecy, and he disappeared as the carriage jolted forward. Galinda
sank back into the cushions. She began to be sorry that Ama Clutch had
punctured her foot with a nail.

Crage Hall was only twenty minutes from Railway Square. Behind its own
bluestone walls, the complex was set with large watery-glass windows in
lancet formation. A tessellation of quatrefoils and blind multifoils ran
riot at the roofline. The appreciation of architecture was Galinda's
private passion, and she pored over the features she could identify,
although the vines and flatmoss fudged many of the finer details of the
buildings. Too soon she was whisked inside.

The Headmistress of Crage Hall, a fish-faced upper-class Gillikinese
woman wearing a lot of cloisonne bangles, was greeting new arrivals in

the atrium. The Head eschewed the drabness of professional women's dress
that Galinda had expected. Instead the imposing woman was bedecked in a
currant-colored gown with patterns of black jet swirling over the bodice
like dynamic markings on sheet music. "I am Madame Morrible," she said
to Galinda. Her voice was basso profundo, her grip crippling, her
posture military, her earrings like holiday tree ornaments. "Flourishes
all around, and a quick cup of tea in the parlor. Then we'll assemble in
the Main Hall and sort you out as to roomies."

The parlor was filled with pretty young women, all wearing green or blue
and trailing black shawls like exhausted shadows behind them. Galinda
was glad for the natural advantages of her flaxen hair, and stood by a
window so the light could dazzle itself off her curls. She hardly sipped
the tea. In a side room, the attendant Amas were serving themselves from
a metal urn, and laughing and yakking already as if they were old
friends from the same village. It was somewhat grotesque, all those
dumpy women smiling at each other, making marketplace noise.

Galinda hadn't read the fine print very closely. She hadn't realized
there would be a need for "roomies." Or perhaps had her parents paid
extra so she could have a private room? And where would Ama Clutch stay?
Looking about her, she could tell that some of these dollies came from
families much better off than hers. The pearls and diamonds on them!
Galinda was glad she had chosen a simple silver collar with mettanite
struts. There was something vulgar about traveling in jewels. As she
realized this truth, she codified it into a saying. At the earliest
perfect opportunity she would bring it out as proof of her having
opinions-and of having traveled. "The overdressed traveler betrays more
interest in being seen than in seeing," she murmured, trying it out,
"while the true traveler knows that the novel world about her serves as
the most appropriate accessory." Good, very good.

Madame Morrible counted heads, gripped a cup of tea, and shooed everyone
into the Main Hall. There Galinda learned that allowing Ama Clutch to go
looking for a surgery had been a colossal mistake. Apparently all that
chatter among Amas hadn't been frivolous and social. They had been
instructed to sort out among them whose young lady would room with
whose. The Amas had been relied upon to get to the nub of the matter
more quickly than the students themselves. No one had spoken for
Galinda-she had gone unrepresented!

After the forgettable welcome remarks, as couple by couple the students
and Amas left to locate their lodgings and settle in, Galinda found
herself growing pale with embarrassment. Ama Clutch, the old fool, would
have fixed her up nicely with someone just a notch or two above on the
social ladder! Near enough that Galinda would suffer no shame, and above
enough to make it worth the while of socializing. But now, all the
better young misses were linked together. Diamond to diamond, emerald to
emerald, for all she could tell! As the room began to empty, Galinda
wondered if she shouldn't go up and interrupt Madame Morrible and
explain the problem. Galinda was, after all, an Arduenna of the Uplands,
at least on one side. It was a hideous accident. Her eyes teared up.

But she hadn't the nerve. She stayed perched on the edge of the fragile,
stupid chair. Except for her, all the center of the room had cleared out
now, and the shyer, more useless girls were left, around the edges, in
the shadows. Surrounded by an obstacle course of empty gilded chairs,
Galinda alone sat like an unclaimed valise.

"Now the rest of you are here without Amas, I understand," said Madame
Momble, a bit sniffily. "Since we require chaperonage, I will assign
each of you to one of the three dormitories for freshers, which sleep
fifteen girls each. There is no social stigma to the dormitory, I might
add. None at all." But she was lying, and not even convincingly.

Galinda finally stood up. "Please, Madame Morrible, there is a mistake.
I am Galinda of the Arduennas. My Ama took a nail in her foot on the
voyage and was detained for a day or two. I am not in the dormitory
class, you see."

"How sad for you," said Madame Morrible, smiling. "I'm sure your Ama
will be pleased to be a chaperone in, shall we say, the Pink Dormitory?
Fourth floor on the right-"

"No, no, she would not," interrupted Galinda, quite bravely. "I am not
here to sleep in a dormitory, Pink or otherwise. You have misunderstood."

"I have not misunderstood, Miss Galinda," said Madame Morrible, growing
even more fishlike as her eyes began to bulge. "There is accident, there
is tardiness, there are decisions to be made. As you were not equipped,
through your Ama, to make your own decision, I am empowered to make it
for you. Please, we are busy and I must name the other girls who will
join you in the Pink Dormitory-"

"I would have a private word with you, Madame," said Galinda in
desperation. "For myself, dormitory partners or a single roomie, it is
no matter. But I cannot recommend that you ask my Ama to oversee other
girls, for reasons I may not say in public." She was lying as fast as
she could, and better than Madame Morrible, who seemed at least intrigued.

"You strike me as impertinent, Miss Galinda," she said mildly.

"I have not yet struck you, Madame Morrible." Galinda delivered the
daring line with her sweetest smile.

Madame Morrible chose to laugh, thank Lurline! "A spark of spunk! You
may come to my chambers this evening and tell me the story of your Ama's
shortcomings, as I should know them. But I will compromise with you,
Miss Galinda. Unless you object, I will have to ask your Ama to
chaperone both you and another girl, one who comes without an Ama. For
you see, all the other students with Amas are already paired off, and
you are the odd one out."

"I am certain my Ama could manage that, at least."

Madame Morrible scanned the page of names, and said, "Very well. To join
Miss Galinda of the Arduennas in a double room-shall I invite the Thropp
Third Descending, of Nest Hardings, Elphaba?"

No one stirred. "Elphaba?" said Madame Morrible again, adjusting her
bangles and pressing two fingers at the bottom of her throat.

The girl was in the back of the room, a pauper in a red dress with gaudy
fretwork, and in clumpy, old-people's boots. At first Galinda thought
what she saw was some trick of the light, a reflection off the adjacent
buildings covered in vines and flatmoss. But as Elphaba moved forward,
lugging her own carpetbags, it became obvious that she was green. A
hatchet-faced girl with putrescent green skin and long, foreign-looking
black hair. "A Munchkinlander by birth, though with many childhood years
spent in Quadling Country," read Madame Morrible from her notes. "How
fascinating for us all, Miss Elphaba. We shall look forward to hearing
tales of exotic climes and times. Miss Galinda and Miss Elphaba, here
are your keys. You may take room twenty-two on the second floor."

She smiled broadly at Galinda as the girls came forward. "Travel is so
broadening," she intoned. Galinda started, the curse of her own words
lobbed hack at her. She curtseyed and fled. Elphaba, eyes on the floor,
followed behind.


2
_______
By the time Ama Clutch arrived the next day, her foot bandaged to three
times its natural sine, Elphaba had already unpacked her few belongings.
They hung raglike on hooks in the cupboard: thin, shapeless shifts,
shamed into a corner by the fulsome hoops and starched bustles and
padded shoulders and cushioned elbows of Galinda's wardrobe. "I am happy
as cheese to be your Ama too, don't matter to me," said Ama Clutch,
smiling broadly in Elphaba's direction, before Galinda had a chance to
get Ama Clutch alone and demand that her minder refuse. "Of course my
Papa is paying you to be my Ama," said Galinda meaningfully, but Ama
Clutch answered, "Not as much as all that, duckie, not as much as all
that. I can be making up my own mind."

"Ama," said Galinda when Elphaba had left to use the mildewy facilities,
"Ama, are you blind? That Munchkinlander girl is green."

"Odd, isn't it? I thought all Munchkinlanders were tiny. She's a proper
height, though. I guess they come in a variety of sizes. Oh, are you
bothered by the green? Well, it might do you some good, if you let it.
If you let it. You affect worldly airs, Galinda, but you don't know the
world yet. I think it's a lark. Why not? Why ever not?"

"It's not yours to organize my education, worldly or otherwise, Ama Clutch!"

"No, my dear," said Ama Clutch, "you've made this mess all by your
lonesome. I'm merely being of service."

So Galinda was stuck. Last night's brief interview with Madame Morrible
had not provided any escape route, either. Galinda had arrived promptly,
in a dotted morpheline skirt with lace bodice, a vision, as she'd said
to herself, in nocturnal purples and midnight blues. Madame Morrible
bade her enter the reception room, in which a small cluster of leather
chairs and a settee were drawn up before an unnecessary fire. The Head
poured mint tea and offered crystallized ginger wrapped in pearlfruit
leaves. She indicated a chair for Galinda, but herself stood by the
mantelpiece like a big game hunter.

In the best tradition of the upper-class savoring its luxuries, they
sipped and nibbled in silence at first. This gave Galinda the chance to
observe that Madame Morrible was fishlike not merely in countenance but
in dress: Her loose-fitting cream foxille flowed like a huge airy
bladder from the high frilled neckline to the knees, where it was
tightly gathered and dropped straight to the floor, hugging the calves
and ankles in neat, anticlimactic pleats. She looked for all the world
like a giant carp in a men's club. And a dull, bored carp at that, not
even a sentient Carp.

"Now your Ama, my dear. The reason she is incapable of supervising a
dormitory. I'm all ears."

Galinda had taken all afternoon to prepare. "You see, Madame Head, I
didn't like to say it publicly. But Ama Clutch suffered a terrible fall
last summer when we were picnicking in the Pertha Hills. She reached for
a handful of wild mountain thyme and went pitching over a cliff. She lay
for weeks in a coma, and when she emerged she had no memory of the
accident at all. If you asked her about it, she wouldn't even know what
you meant. Amnesia by trauma."

"I see. How very tiresome for you. But why does this make her unequal to
the job I proposed?"

"She has become addled. Ama Clutch, on occasion, gets confused as to
what has Life and what doesn't. She will sit and talk to, oh, say, a
chair, and then relate its history back to us. Its aspirations, its
reservations-"

"Its joys, its sorrows," said Madame Morrible. "How truly novel. The
emotional life of furniture. I never."

"But, silly as this is, and a cause for hours of merriment, the
corollary ailment is more alarming. Madame Morrible, I must tell you
that Ama Clutch sometimes forgets that people are alive. Or animals."
Galinda paused, then added, "Or Animals, even."

"Go on, my dear."

"It is all right for me, because Ama has been my Ama all my life, and I
know her. I know her ways. But she can sometimes forget a person is
there, or needs her, or is a person. Once she cleaned a wardrobe and
tipped it over onto the houseboy, breaking his back. She didn't register
his screaming right there, right at her feet. She folded the
nightclothes and had a conversation with my mother's evening gown,
asking it all sorts of impertinent questions."

"What a fascinating condition," said Madame Morrible. "And how vexing
for you, really."

"I couldn't have allowed her to accept responsibility for fourteen other
girls," Galinda confided. "For me, alone, there is no problem. I love
the foolish old woman, in a way."

Madame Morrible had said, "But what of your roomie? Can you jeopardize
her well-being?"

"I didn't ask for her." Galinda looked the Head in her glazed,
unblinking eye. "The poor Munchkinlander appears to be used to a life of
distress. Either she will adjust or, I assume, she will petition you to
be removed from my room. Unless, of course, you feel it your duty to
move her for her own safety."

Madame Morrible said, "I suppose if Miss Elphaba cannot live with what
we give her, she will leave Crage Hall on her own accord. Don't you think?"

It was the we in what we give her: Madame Morrible was binding Galinda
into a campaign. They both knew it. Galinda struggled to maintain her
autonomy. But she was only seventeen, and she had suffered that same
indignity of exclusion in the Main Hall just hours ago. She didn't know
what Madame Morrible could have against Elphaba except the looks of her.
But there was something, there was clearly something. What was it? She
sensed it to be wrong somehow. "Don't you think, dear?" said Madame
Morrible, bowing a bit forward like a fish arching in a slow-motion leap.

"Well, of course, we must do what we can," said Galinda, as vaguely as
possible. But she seemed the fish, and caught on a most clever hook.

Out of the shadows of the reception room came a small tiktok thing,
about three feet high, made of burnished bronze, with an identifying
plate screwed into its front. The plate said Smith and Tinker's
Mechanical Man, in ornate script. The clockwork servant collected the
empty teacups and whirred itself away. Galinda didn't know how long it
had been there, or what it had heard, but she had never liked tiktok
creatures.


Elphaba had a bad case of what Galinnda called the reading sulks.
Elphaba didn't curl up-she was too bony to curl-but she jackknifed
herself nearer to herself, her funny pointed green nose poking in the
moldy leaves of a book. She played with her hair while she read, coiling
it up and down around fingers so thin and twiglike as to seem almost
exoskeletal. Her hair never curled no matter how often Elphaba twined it
around her

hands. It was beautiful hair, in an odd, awful way, with a shine like
the pelt of a healthy giltebeast. Black silk. Coffee spun into threads.
Night rain. Galinda, not given to metaphor on the whole, found Elphaba's
hair entrancing, the more so because the girl was otherwise so ugly.

They didn't talk much. Galinda was too busy forging alliances with the
better girls who had been her rightful roomie prospects. No doubt she
could switch rooms at half-term, or at any rate next fall. So Galinda
left Elphaba alone, and she flew down the hall to gossip with her new
friends. Milla, Pfannee, Shenshen. Just as in children's books about
boarding school, each new friend was wealthier than the one before.

At first Galinda didn't mention who her roomie was. And Elphaba showed
no sign of expecting Galinda's company, which was a relief. But the
gossip had to start sooner or later. The first wave of discussion about
Elphaba concerned her wardrobe and her evident poverty, as if her
classmates were above noticing her sickly and sickening color. "Someone
told me that Madame Head had said Miss Elphaba was the Thropp Third
Descending from Nest Hardings," said Pfannee, who was also a
Munchkinlander, but one of diminutive stock, not full-size like the
Thropp family. "The Thropp are highly regarded in Nest Hardings and even
beyond. The Eminent Thropp put together the area's militia and tore up
the Yellow Brick Road that the Omar Regent had been laying in when we
all were small-before the Glorious Revolution. There was no callousness
in the Eminent Thropp or his wife or family, including his granddaughter
Elena, you can be assured." By callousness, of course, Pfannee meant
greenness.

"But how the mighty have fallen! She's as ragged as a gypsy," observed
Milla. "Have you ever seen such tawdry dresses? Her Ama should be sacked."

"She has no Ama, I think," said Shenshen. Galinda, who knew for sure,
said nothing.

"They said she had spent time in Quadling Country," Milla went on.
"Perhaps her family had been exiled as criminals?"

"Or they were speculators in rubies," said Shenshen.

"Then where's the wealth?" snapped Milla. "Speculators in rubies did
very well, Miss Shenshen. Our Miss Elphaba doesn't have two barter
tokens to rub together and call her own."

"Perhaps it's a kind of religious calling? A chosen poverty?" suggested
Pfannee, and at this nonsense they all threw back their heads and chortled.

Elphaba, coming into the buttery for a cup of coffee, caused them to
escalate into louder roars of laughter. Elphaba did not look over at
them, but every other student did glance their way, each girl longing to
be included in the jollity, which made the four new friends feel just fine.


Galinda was slow coming to terms with actual learning. She had
considered her admission into Shin University as a sort of testimony to
her brilliance, and believed that she would adorn the halls of learning
with her beauty and occasional clever sayings. She supposed, glumly,
that she had meant to be a sort of living marble bust: This is Youthful
Intelligence; admire Her. Isn't She lovely?

It hadn't actually dawned on Galinda that there was more to learn, and
furthermore that she was expected to do it. The education all the new
girls chiefly wanted, of course, had nothing to do with Madame Momble or
the prattling Animals at lecterns and on daises. What the girls wanted
wasn't equations, or quotations, or orations-they wanted Shin itself.
City life. The broad, offensive panoply of life and Life, seamlessly
intertwined.

Galinda was relieved that Elphaba never took part in the outings the
Amas organized. Since they often stopped at a lunchroom for a modest
meal, the weekly brigade became known informally as the Chowder and
Marching Society. The university district was aflame with autumn color,
not just of dying leaves, but also of fraternity pennants, fluttering
from rooftop and spire.

Galinda soaked up the architecture of Shin. Here and there, mostly in
protected College yards and side streets, the oldest surviving domestic
architecture still leaned, ancient wattle-and-daub and exposed stud
framing held up like paralytic grannies by stronger, newer relatives on
either side. Then, in dizzying succession, unparalleled glories:
Bloodstone Medieval, Merthic (both Least and the more fantastical Late),
Gallantine with its symmetries and restraint, Gallantine Reformed with
all those festering ogees and broken pediments, Bluestone Revival,
Imperial Bombast, and Industrial Modern, or, as the critics in the
liberal press put it, High

Hostile Crudstyle, the form propagated by the modernity-minded Wizard of Oz.

Besides architecture, the excitement was tame, to be sure. On one
notable occasion, which no Crage Hall girl present ever forgot, the
senior boys from Three Queens College across the canal, for a lark and a
dare, had tanked themselves up with beer in the middle of the afternoon,
had hired a White Bear violinist, and had gone down to dance together
under the willow trees, wearing nothing but their clinging cotton
drawers and their school scarves, It was deliciously pagan, as they had
set an old chipped statue of Lurline the Fairy Queen on a three-legged
stool, and she seemed to smile at their loose-limbed gaiety. The girls
and the Amas pretended shock, but poorly; they lingered, watching, until
horrified proctors from Three Queens came rushing out to round the
revelers up. Near nudity was one thing, but public Lurlinism-even as a
joke-bordered on being intolerably retrograde, even royalist. And that
did not do in the Wizard's reign.


One Saturday evening, when the Amas had a rare night off and had taken
themselves in to a pleasure faith meeting in Ticknor Circus, Galinda had
a brief and silly squabble with Pfanriee and Shenshen, after which she
retired early to her bedchamber, complaining of a headache. Elphaba was
sitting up in her bed with the commissary brown blanket tucked around
her. She was hunched forward over a book, as usual, and her hair hung
down like brackets on either side of her face. She looked to Galinda
like one of those etchings-the natural history books were full of
them-of odd Winkie mountain women who hide their strangeness with a
shawl over the head. Elphaba was munching on the pips of an apple,
having eaten all the rest of it. "Well, you look cozy enough, Miss
Elphaba," said Galinda, challengingly. In three months it was the first
social remark she had managed to make to her roomie.

"Looks are only looks," said Elphaba, not looking up.

"Will it break your concentration if I sit in front of the fire?"

"You cast a shadow if you sit just there."

"Oh, sorry," said Galinda, and moved. "Mustn't cast shadows, must we,
when urgent words are waiting to be read?"

Elphaba was back in her book already, and didn't answer.

"What the dickens are you reading, night and day?"

It seemed as if Elphaba were coming up for air from a still, isolated
pool. "While I don't read the same thing every day, you know, tonight I
am reading some of the speeches of the early unionist fathers."

"Why ever would anyone want to do that?"

"I don't know. I don't even know if I want to read them. I'm just
reading them."

"But why? Miss Elphaba the Delirious, why, why?"

Elphaba looked up at Galinda and smiled. "Elphaba the Delirious. I like it."

Before she had a chance to bite it back, Gallinda returned the smile,
and at the same time a sweeping wind sent a handful of hail against the
glass, and the latch broke. Galinda leaped to swing the casement shut,
but Elphaba scuttled to the far corner of the room, away from the wet.
"Give me the leather luggage grip, Miss Elphaba, from inside my
satchel-there on the shelf, behind the hatboxes-yes-and I'll secure this
until we can get the porter to fix it tomorrow." Elphaba found the
strap, but in doing so the hat boxes tumbled down, and three colorful
hats rolled out onto the cold floor. While Galinda scrabbled up on a
chair to organize the window shut again, Elphaba returned the hats to
their boxes. "Oh, try it on, try that one on," said Galinda. She meant
to have something to laugh at, to tell Misses Pfannee and Shenshen about
and so to work her way back into their good graces.

"Oh, I daren't, Miss Galinda," Elphaba said, and went to set the hat away.

"No, do, I insist," Galinda said, "for a lark. I've never seen you in
something pretty."

"I don't wear pretty things."

"What's the harm?" said Galinda. "Just here. No one else need see you."

Elphaba stood facing the fire, but turned her head on her shoulders to
look long and unblinkingly at Galinda, who had not yet hopped down from
the chair. The Munchkinlander was in her nightgown, a drab sack without
benefit of lace edging or piping. The green face above the wheatgray
fabric seemed almost to glow, and the glorious long straight black hair
fell right over where breasts should be if she would ever reveal any
evidence that she possessed them. Elphaba looked like something between an

animal and an animal like something more than life but not quite Life.


There was an expectancy but no intuition, was that it?-like a child who
has never remembered having a dream being told to have sweet dreams.
You'd almost call it unrefined, but not in a social sense-more in a
sense of nature not having done its full job with Elphaba, not quite
having managed to make her enough like herself.


"Oh, put the damn hat on, really," said Galinda, for whom, where
introspection was concerned, enough was enough.

Elphaba obliged. The thing was the lovely roundel bought from the best
milliner in the Pertha Hills. It had orangey swags and a yellow lace net
that could be draped to achieve varying degrees of disguise. On the
wrong head it would look ghastly, and Galinda expected to have to bite
the inside of her lip to keep from laughing. It was the kind of
super-feminine thing boys in a pantomime wore when they pretended to be
girls.

But Elphaba dropped the whole sugary plate onto her strange pointed
head, and looked at Gallinda again from underneath the broad brim. She
seemed like a rare flower, her skin stemlike in its soft pearlescent
sheen, the hat a botanical riot. "Oh Miss Elphaba," said Galinda, "you
terrible mean thing, you're pretty."

"Oh, and now you have lied, so go confess to the unionist minister,"
said Elphaba. "Is there a looking glass?"

"Of course there is, down the hall in the lavatory."

"Not there. I'm not going to be seen by those ninnies in this."

"Well then," decided Galinda, "can you find an angle without hiding the
firelight, and look at your reflection in the dark window?"

They both gazed at the green and flowery spectre reflected in the watery
old glass, surrounded by the blackness, driven through with the wild
rain beyond. A maplefruit leaf, shaped like a star with blunted points,
or like a heart grown lopsided, suddenly whirled out of the night and
plastered itself on the reflection in the glass, gleaming red and
reflecting the firelight, just where the heart would be-or so it seemed
from the angle at which Galinda stood.

"Entrancing," she said. "There's some strange exotic quality of beauty
about you. I never thought."

"Surprise," said Elphaba, and then nearly blushed, if darker green

constituted a blush-"I mean, surprise, not beauty. It's just surprise.
'Well, what do you know.' It's not beauty."

"Who am I to argue," said Galinda, tossing her curls and striking a
pose, and Elphaba actually laughed at that, and Galinda laughed back,
partly horrified as she did so. Elphaba tore the hat off then, and
returned it to its box, and when she picked up her book again Galinda
said, "So what is Beauty reading anyway? I mean really, tell me, why the
old sermons?"

"My father is a unionist minister," said Elphaba. "I'm just curious what
it's all about, that's all."

"Why don't you just ask him?"

Elphaba didn't answer. Her face took on a solid, waiting look, like that
of an owl just about to go for a mouse.

"So what're they on about? Anything interesting?" said Galinda. No sense
giving up now, there was nothing else to do and she was too wrought up
by the storm to sleep.

"This one is thinking about good and evil," said Elphaba. "Whether they
really exist at all."

"Oh, yawn," said Galinda. "Evil exists, I know that, and its name is
Boredom, and ministers are the guiltiest crew of all."

"You don't really think that?"

Galinda didn't often stop to consider whether she believed in what she
said or not; the whole point of conversation was flow. "Well, I didn't
mean to insult your father, for all I know he is an entertaining and
lively preacher."

"No, I mean do you think evil really exists?"

"Well, how do I know what I think?"

"Well, ask yourself Miss Galinda. Does evil exist?"

"I don't know. You say. Does evil exist?"

"I don't expect to know." The look went slanty and inwards somehow, or
was it the hair swinging forward like a veil again?

"Why don't you just ask your father? I don't understand. He should know,
that's his job."

"My father taught me a lot," Elphaba said slowly. "He was very well
educated indeed. He taught me to read and write and think, and more. But
not enough. I just think, like our teachers here, that if ministers are
effective, they're good at asking questions to get you to think. I don't
think they're supposed to have the answers. Not necessarily."

"Oh, well, tell that to our boring minister at home. He has all the
answers, and charges for them, too."

"But maybe there's something to what you say," said Elphaba. "I mean,
evil and boredom. Evil and ennui. Evil and the lack of stimulation. Evil
and sluggish blood."

"You're writing a poem, it sounds like. Why ever would a girl be
interested in evil?"

"I'm not interested in it. It's just what the early sermons are all on
about. So I'm thinking about what they're thinking about, that's all.
Sometimes they talk about diet and not eating Animals, and then I think
of that. I just like to think about what I'm reading. Don't you?"

"I don't read very well. So I don't think I think very well either."
Galinda smiled. "I dress to kill, though."

There was no response from Elphaba. Galinda, usually pleased that she
knew the correct way to steer every conversation into a paean to
herself, was flummoxed. She lamely ventured on, annoyed at having to
expend the effort. "Well, whatever did those old brutes think about
evil, then?"

"It's hard to say exactly. They seemed to be obsessed with locating it
somewhere. I mean, an evil spring in the mountains, an evil smoke, evil
blood in the veins going from parent to child. They were sort of like
the early explorers of Oz, except the maps they made were of invisible
stuff, pretty inconsistent one with the other."

"And where is evil located?" Galinda asked, flopping onto her bed and
closing her eyes.

"Well, they didn't agree, did they? Or else what would they have to
write sermons arguing about? Some said the original evil was the vacuum
caused by the Fairy Queen Lurline leaving us alone here. When goodness
removes itself, the space it occupies corrodes and becomes evil, and
maybe splits apart and multiplies. So every evil thing is a sign of the
absence of deity."

"Well I wouldn't know an evil thing if it fell on me," said Galinda.

"The early unionists, who were a lot more Lurlinist than unionists are
today, argued that some invisible pocket of corruption was floating
around the neighborhood, a direct descendent of the pain the world felt
when Lurline left. Like a patch of cold air on a warm still night. A
perfectly agreeable soul might march through it and become infected, and
then go and kill a neighbor. But

then was it your fault if you walked through a patch of badness? If you
couldn't see it? There wasn't ever any council of unionists that decided
it one way or the other, and nowadays so many people don't even believe
in Lurline."

"But they believe in evil still," said Galinda with a yawn. "Isn't that
funny, that deity is passe but the attributes and implications of deity
linger-"

"You are thinking!" Elphaba cried. Galinda raised herself to her elbows
at the enthusiasm in her roomie's voice.

"I am about to sleep, because this is profoundly boring to me," Galinda
said, but Elphaba was grinning from ear to ear.


In the morning Ama Clutch regaled them both with tales of the night out.
There was a talented young witch in nothing but shocking pink
undergarments, adorned with feathers and beads. She sang songs to the
audience and collected food tokens in her cleavage from the blushing
undergraduate men in the nearer tables. She did a little domestic magic,
turning water into orange juice, changing cabbages into carrots, and
running knives through a terrified piglet, which spouted champagne
instead of blood. They all had a sip. A terrible fat man with a beard
came on and chased the witch around as if he would kiss her-oh, it was
too funny, too funny! In the end the whole cast and audience together
stood and sang "What We Don't Allow in the Public Halls (In Fact Is for
Sale in the Cheaper Stalls)." The Amas had a riotous good time, every
one of them.

"Really," said Galinda sniffily. "The pleasure faith is so-so common."

"But I see the window broke," said Ama Clutch. "I hope it wasn't boys
trying to climb in."

"Are you mad?" said Galinda. "In that storm?"

"What storm?" said Ama Clutch. "That don't make sense. Last night was as
calm as moonlight."

"Hah, that was some show," said Galinda. "You were so caught up in
pleasure faith you lost your bearings, Ama Clutch." They went down to
breakfast together, leaving Elphaba still asleep, or pretending to be
asleep maybe. Though as they walked along the corridors, sun through the
broad windows making racks of light on the cold slate floors, Galinda
did wonder about the capriciousness of weather. Was it even possible for

a storm to pitch itself against one part of town and overlook another?
There was so much about the world she didn't know.


"She did nothing but chatter about evil," said Galinda to her friends,
over buttered brisks with ploughfoot jelly. "Some inside tap was turned
on, and prattle just poured out of her. And, girls, when she tried on my
hat, I could've died. She looked like somebody's maiden aunt come up out
of the grave, I mean as frumpy as a Cow. I endured it only for you, so I
could tell you all; otherwise I'd have expired with glee on the spot. It
was so very much!"

"You poor thing, to have to be our spy and stand the shame of that
grasshopper roomie!" said Pfannee devoutly, clasping Galinda's hand.
"You're too good!"


3
______
One evening--the first evening of snow--Madame Morrible held a poetry
soiree. Boys from Three Queens and Ozma Towers were invited. Galinda
brought out her cerise satin gown with the matching shawl and slippers
and an heirloom Gillikinese fan, painted with a pattern of ferns and
phoenix. She arrived early to lay claim to the upholstered chair that
would best set off her own attire, and she dragged the chair over to the
bookshelves so that the light from library tapers would gently fall on
her. The rest of the girls-not only the freshers, but the sophisters and
seniors-entered in a whispering clot and arranged themselves on sofas
and lounges in Crage Hall's nicest parlor. The boys who came were
somewhat disappointing; there weren't that many, and they looked
terrified, or giggled with one another. Then the professors and doctors
arrived, not just the Animals from Crage Hall, but the boys' professors
too, who were mostly men. The girls began to be glad they had dressed
well, for while the boys were a spotty bunch, the male professors had
grave and charming smiles.

Even some of the Amas came, though they sat behind a screen at the back
of the room. The sound of their knitting needles going at a rapid rate
was soothing to Galinda, somehow. She knew Ama Clutch would be there.

The double doors at the end of the parlor were swept open by that little
bronze industrial crab Galinda had met on her first evening at Crage
Hall. It had been especially serviced for the occasion; you could still
detect the cutting scent of metal polish. Madame Morrible then made an
entrance, severe and striking in a coal black cape, which she let drop
to the floor (the thingy picked it up and slung it over a sofa back);
her gown was a fiery orange, with abalone lake shells stitched all over
it. Despite herself Galinda had to admire the effect. In tones even more
unctuous than usual, Madame Morrible welcomed the visitors and led
polite applause at the notion of Poetry and Its Civilizing Effects.

Then she spoke on the new verse form sweeping the social parlors and
poetry dens of Shin. "It is known as the Quell," said Madame Morrible,
in her Headmistress's smile displaying an impressive assembly of teeth.
"The Quell is a brief poem, uplifting in nature. It pairs a sequence of
thirteen short lines with a concluding, unrhyming apothegm. The reward
of the poem is in the revealing contrast between rhyming argument and
concluding remark. Sometimes they may contradict each other, but always
they illuminate and, like all poetry, sanctify life." She beamed like a
beacon in a fog. "Tonight especially, a Quell might serve as an anodyne
to the unpleasant disruptions we have been hearing about in our nation's
capital." The boy students looked at least alert, and all the professors
nodded, though Galinda could tell none of the girl students had a clue
as to what "unpleasant disruptions" Madame Morrible was prattling on about.

A third-year girl at the hammer-strung keyboard clattered out a couple
of chords, and the guests cleared their throats and looked at their
shoes. Galinda saw Elphaba arrive in the back of the room, dressed in
her usual casual red shift, two books under her arm and a scarf wound
around her head. She sank into the last empty chair, and bit into an
apple just as Madame Morrible was drawing in a dramatic breath to begin.


Sing a hymn to rectitude,

Ye forward-thinking multitude.

Advance in humble gratitude

For strictest rules of attitude.

To elevate the Common Good

In Brotherhood and Sisterhood

We celebrate authority.

Fraternity, Sorority,

United, pressing onward, we

Restrict the ills of liberty.

There is no numinosity

Like Power's generosity

In helping curb atrocity.

Bear down on the rod and foil the child.


Madame Morrible lowered her head to signify that she was done. There was
a rumbling of indistinct comments. Galinda, who didn't know much about
Poetry, thought perhaps this was the accepted way of appreciating it.
She grumbled a little bit to Shenshen, who sat in a straightback chair
to one side, looking dropsical. Wax from the taper was about to drip
onto Shenshen's silk-shouldered white gown with the lemon-chiffon swags,
and ruin it, most likely, but Galinda decided Shenshen's family could
afford to replace a gown. She kept still.

"Another," said Madame Momble. "Another Quell."

The room grew silent, but a little uneasily so?


Alas! For impropriety,

The guillotine of piety.

To remedy society

Indulge not to satiety

In mirth and shameless gaiety.

Choose sobering sobriety.

Behave as if the deity

Approaches in its mystery,

And greet it with sonority.

Let your especial history

Be built upon sorority

Whose Virtues do exemplify,

And Social Good thus multiply.

Animals should be seen and not heard.


Again, there was mumbling, but it was of a different nature now, a
meaner key. Doctor Dillamond harrumphed and beat a cloven hoof against
the floor, and was heard to say, "Well that's not poetry, that's
propaganda, and it's not even good propaganda at that."

Elphaba sidled over to Galinda's side with her chair under her arm, and
plunked it down between Galinda and Shenshen. She put her bony behind on
its slatted seat and leaned to Galinda and asked, 'What do you make of
this?"

It was the first time Galinda had ever been addressed by Elphaba in
public. Mortification bloomed. "I don't know," she said faintly, looking
in the other direction.

"It's a cleverness, isn't it?" said Elphaba. "I mean that last line, you
couldn't tell by that fancy accent whether it was meant to be Animals or
animals. No wonder Dillamond's furious."

And he was. Doctor Dillamond looked around the room as if trying to
marshal the opposition. "I'm shocked, shocked," he said. "Deeply
shocked," he amended, and he marched out of the room. Professor Lenx,
the Boar who taught math, left too, accidentally crushing an antique
gilded sideboard through trying to avoid stepping on Miss Milla's
yellowlace train. Mister Mikko, the Ape who taught history, sat
dolefully in the shadows, too confused and ill at ease to make a move.
"Well," said Madame Momble in a carrying tone, "one expects poetry, if
it is Poetry, to offend. It is the Right of Art."

"I think she's bonkers," said Elphaba. Galinda found it too horrible.
What if even one of the pimply boys saw Elphaba whispering to her! She'd
never hold her head up in society again. Her life was ruined. "Shhh, I'm
listening, I love poetry," Galinda told her sternly. "Don't talk to me,
you're ruining my evening."

Elphaba sat back, and finished her apple, and they both kept listening.
The grumbling and murmuring grew louder after each poem, and the boys
and girls began to relax and look around at one another.

When the last Quell of the evening had knelled (to the cryptic aphorism
"A witch in time saves nine"), Madame Morrible retired to uneven
applause. She allowed her bronze servant to administer tea to the
guests, and then the girls, and finally the Amas. In a heap of rustling
silk and clicking abalone lake shells, she received compliments from the
male professors and some of the braver boys, and begged them to sit near
her so she could enjoy their criticisms. "Do tell the truth. I was
overly dramatic, wasn't I? It is my curse. The stage called, but I chose
a life of Service to Girls." She lowered her eyelashes in modesty as her
captive audience mumbled a lukewarm protest.

Galinda was still trying to extricate herself from the embarrassing
company of Elphaba, who kept on about the Quells and what they meant,
and if they were any good. "How do I know, how should I know, we're
first-year girls, remember?" said Galinda, yearning to swish over to
where Pfannee, Milla, and Shenshen were squeezing lemons into the
teacups of a few edgy boys.

"Well, your opinion is as good as hers, I think," said Elphaba. "That's
the real power of art, I think. Not to chide but to provoke challenge.
Otherwise why bother?"

A boy came up to them. Galinda thought he wasn't much to look at, but
anything was better than the green leech at her side. "How do you do?"
said Galinda, not even waiting for him to get up his nerve. "It's so
nice to meet you. You must be from, let's see-"

"Well, I'm from Briscoe Hall, actually," he said. "But I'm a
Munchkinlander originally. As you can tell." And she could, for he
hardly came up to her shoulder. He wasn't bad looking for all that. A
spun-cotton mess of ill-combed golden hair, a toothy smile, a better
complexion than some. The evening tunic he wore was a provincial blue,
but there were flecks of silver thread running through it. He was trim,
nicely so. His boots were polished and he stood a little bandy-legged,
feet pointed out.

"This is what I love," said Galinda, "meeting strangers. This is Shia at
its finest. I am Gillikinese." She just managed to keep herself frost
adding, of course, for she believed it evident in her attire.
Munchkinlander girls had a habit of quieter dress, so understated that
they were often mistaken, in Shiz, for servants.

"Well then, hello to you," said the boy. "My name is Master Boq."

"Miss Galinda of the Arduennas of the Uplands."

"And you?" said Boq, turning to Elphaba. "Who are you?"

"I'm leaving," she said. "Fresh dreams, all."

"No, don't leave," said Boq. "I think I know you."

"You don't know me," said Elphaba, pausing as she turned "However could
you know me?"

"You're Miss Elphie, aren't you?"

"Miss Elphie!" cried Galinda gaily. "How delightful!"

"How do you know who I am?" said Elphaba. "Master Boq from Munchkinland?
I don't know you."

"You and I played together when you were tiny," said Boq. "My father was
the mayor of the village you were born in. I think. You were born in
Rush Margins, in Wend Hardings, weren't you? You're the daughter of the
unionist minister, I forget his name."

"Frex," said Elphaba. Her eyes looked slanted and wary.

"Frexspar the Godly!" said Boq. "That's right. You know they still talk
about him, and your mama, and the night the Clock of the Time Dragon
came to Rush Margins. I was two or three years old and they took me to
see it, but I don't remember that. I do remember that you were in a play
set with me when I was still in short pants. Do you remember Gawnette?
She was the woman who minded us. And Bree? He is my dad. Do you remember
Rush Margins?"

"This is all smoke and guesswork," said Elphaba. "How can I contradict?
Let me tell you about what happened in your life before you can remember
it. You were born a frog." (This was unkind, as Boq did have an
amphibious look about him.) "You got sacrificed to the Clock of the Time
Dragon and were turned into a boy. But on your marriage night when your
wife opens her legs you'll turn back into a tadpole and-"

"Miss Elphaba!" cried Galinda, flicking open her fan to wave the flush
of shame from her face. "Your tongue!"

"Oh well, I have no childhood," said Elphaba. "So you can say what you
like. I grew up in Quadling Country with the marsh people. I squelch
when I walk. You don't want to talk to me. Talk to Miss Galinda, she's
much better in parlors than I am. I have to go now." Elphaba nodded a
good night salute and escaped, almost at a run.

"Why did she say all that?" said Boq, no embarrassment in his voice,
just wonder. "Of course I remember her. How many green people are there?"

"It's just possible," considered Galinda. "that she didn't like being
recognized on account of her skin color. I don't know for sure, but
perhaps she's sensitive about it."

"She must know that it's what people would remember."

"Well, as far as I am aware, you are right about who she is," Galinda
went on. "They tell me her great-grandfather is the Eminent Thropp of
Colwen Grounds in Nest Hardings."

"That's the one," Boq said. "Elphie. I never thought I'd see her again."

"Won't you have some more tea? I'll call the server," Galinda said. "Let
us sit here and you can tell me all about Munchkinland. I am aquiver
with curiosity." She perched herself back on the
chair-in-sympathetic-colors and looked her very best. Boq sat down, and
shook his head, as if bewildered by the apparition of Elphaba.


When Galinda retired that evening, Elphaba was already in bed, blankets
pulled up over her head, and a patently theatrical snore issuing forth.
Galinda huffed herself into bed with a lump, annoyed that she could feel
rejected by the green girl.


In the week that followed much was said about the evening of Quells.
Doctor Dillamond interrupted his biology lecture to call for a response
from his students. The girls didn't understand what a biological
response to poetry might be and sat silent at his leading questions. He
finally exploded, "Doesn't anyone make the connection between the
expression of those thoughts and what's been going on in the Emerald City?"

Miss Pfannee, who didn't believe she was paying tuition in order to be
yelled at, snapped back at him. "We don't have the tiniest notion what's
going on in the Emerald City! Stop playing games with us; if you have
something to say, say it. Don't bleat so."

Doctor Dillamond stared out the windows and seemed to be trying to
control his temper. The students were thrilled with the little drama.
Then the Goat turned and in a milder voice than they expected he told
them that the Wizard of Oz had proclaimed Banns on Animal Mobility,
effective several weeks ago. This meant not only that Animals were
restricted in their access to travel conveyances, lodgings, and public
services. The Mobility it referred to was also professional. Any Animal
coming of age was prohibited from working in the professions or the public

sector. They were, effectively, to be herded back to the farmlands and
wilds if they wanted to work for wages at all.

"What do you think Madame Morrible was saying when she ended that Quell
with the epigram Animals should be seen and not heard?" asked the Goat
tersely.

"Well, anyone would be upset," said Galinda. "I mean, any Animal. But
it's not as if your job is threatened, is it? Here you are, still
teaching us."

"What about my children? What about my kids?"

"Do you have kids? I didn't know you were married."

The Goat closed his eyes. "I'm not married, Miss Galinda. But I might
be. Or I may. Or perhaps I have nieces and nephews. They have already
been banned effectively from studying at Shin because they can't hold a
pencil to write an essay with. How many Animals have you ever seen in
this paradise of education?" Well, it was true; there were none.

"Well, I do think it's pretty dreadful," said Galinda. "Why would the
Wizard of Oz do such a thing?"

"Why indeed," said the Goat.

"No, really, why. It's a real question. I don't know."

"I don't know either." The Goat turned to his rostrum and shoved some
papers this way and that, and was then seen pawing a handkerchief from a
lower shelf, and blowing his nose. "My grandmothers were milking-Goats
at a farm in Gillikin. Through their lifelong sacrifices and labors they
purchased the help of a local schoolteacher to educate me and to take
dictation when I went for my exams. Their efforts are about to go to waste."

"But you can still teach!" said Pfannee petulantly.

"The thin edge of the wedge, my dear," said the Goat, and dismissed the
class early. Galinda found herself glancing over toward Elphaba, who had
a strange, focused look. As Galinda fled the classroom, Elphaba
approached the front of the room, where Doctor Dillamond stood shaking
in uncontrolled spasms, his horned head bowed.


A few days later, Madame Morrible gave one of her occasional open
lectures on Early Hymns and Pagan Paeans. She called for questions, and
the entire assembly was startled to see Elphaba unfold herself from her
customary fetal position in the back of the room and address the Head.

"Madame Morrible, if you please," said Elphaba, "we never had an
opportunity to discuss the Quells that you recited in the parlor last week."

"Discuss," said Madame Morrible with a generous though shooing wave of
the bangled hands.

"Well, Doctor Dillamond seemed to think they were in questionable taste,
given the Banns on Animal Mobility."

"Doctor Dillamond, alas," said Madame Morrible, "is a doctor. He is not
a poet. He is also a Goat, and I might ask you girls if we have ever had
a great Goat sonneteer or balladeer? Alas, dear Miss Elphaba, Doctor
Dillamond doesn't understand the poetic convention of irony. Would you
like to define irony for the class, please?"

"I don't believe I can, Madame."

"Irony, some say, is the art of juxtaposing incongruous parts. One needs
a knowing distance. Irony presupposes detachment, which, alas, in the
case of Animal Rights, we may forgive Doctor Dillamond for being without."

"So that phrase that he objected to-Animals should be seen and not
heard-that was ironic?" continued Elphaba, studying her papers and not
looking at Madame Morrible. Galinda and her classmates were enthralled,
for it was clear that each of the females at opposite ends of the room
would have enjoyed seeing the other crumple in a sudden attack of the
spleen.

"One could consider it in an ironic mode if one chose," said Madame
Morrible.

"How do you choose?" said Elphaba.

"How impertinent!" said Madame Morrible.

"Well, but I don't mean impertinence. I'm trying to learn. If you- if
anyone-thought that statement was true, then it isn't in conflict with
the boring bossy bit that preceded it. It's just argument and
conclusion, and I don't see the irony."

"You don't see much, Miss Elphaba," said Madame Morrible. "You must
learn to put yourself in the shoes of someone wiser than you are, and
look from that angle. To be stuck in ignorance, to be circumscribed by
the walls of one's own modest acumen, well, it Is very sad in one so
young and bright." She spit out the last word, and it seemed to Galinda,
somehow, a low comment on Elphaba's skin color, which today was indeed
lustrous with the effort of public speaking.

"But I was trying to put myself in the shoes of Doctor Dillamond," said
Elphaba, almost whining, but not giving up.

"In the case of poetic interpretation, I venture to suggest, it may
indeed be true. Animals should not be heard," snapped Madame Morrible.

"Do you mean that ironically?" said Elphaba, but she sat down with her
hands over her face, and did not look up again for the rest of the session.


4
______
When the second semester began, and Galinda was still saddled with
Elphaba as a roomie, she made a brief protest to Madame Morrible. But
the Head would allow no shifting, no rearranging. "Far too upsetting for
my other girls," she said. "Unless you'd like to be removed to the Pink
Dormitory. Your Ama Clutch seems, to my watchful eye, to be recovering
from the ailments you described when first we met. Perhaps now she is up
to overseeing fifteen girls?"

"No, no," said Galinda quickly. "There are recurrences from time to
time, but I don't mention them. I don't like to be a bother."

"How thoughtful," said Madame Momble. "Bless you, sweet thing. Now my
dear, I wonder if we might take a moment, as long as you've come in for
a chat, to discuss your academic plans for next fall? As you know,
second year is when girls choose their specialties. Have you given it
any thought?"

"Very little," said Galinda. "Frankly, I thought my talents would just
emerge and make it clear whether I should try natural science, or the
arts, or sorcery, or perhaps even history. I don't think I'm cut out for
ministerial work."

"I'm not surprised that one such as you should be in doubt," said Madame
Morrible, which wasn't greatly encouraging to Galinda. "But may I
suggest sorcery? You could be very good at it. I pride myself on knowing
this sort of thing."

"I'll think about it," said Galinda, though her early appetite for
sorcery had waned once she'd heard what a grind it was to learn spells
and, worse, to understand them.

"In the event you choose sorcery, it might-just might-be possible to
find for you a new roomie," said Madame Morrible, "given that

Miss Elphaba has already told me her interests lie in the natural sciences."

"Oh well then, I certainly will give it a great deal of thought," said
Galinda. She struggled with unnamed conflicts within her. Madame
Morrible, for all her upper-class diction and fabulous wardrobe, seemed
just a tad-oh-dangerous. As if her big public smile were composed of the
light glancing off knives and lances, as if her deep voice masked the
rumbling of distant explosions. Galinda always felt as if she couldn't
see the whole picture. It was disconcerting, and to her credit at least
Galinda felt inside herself the ripping apart of some valuable
fabric-was it integrity?-when she sat in Madame Morrible's parlor and
drank the perfect tea.

"For the sister, I hear, is eventually coming up to Shin," concluded
Madame Morrible a few minutes later, as if silence had not intervened,
and several tasty biscuits, "because there's nothing I can do to stop
it. And that, I understand, would be dreadful. You would not like it.
The sister being as she is. Undoubtedly spending much time in Miss
Elphaba's room, being tended to." She smiled wanly. A puff of powdery
aroma came forward from the flank of her neck, almost as if Madame
Morrible could somehow dispense a pleasant personal odor at will.

"The sister being as she is." Madame Morrible tutted and wagged her head
back and forth as she saw Galinda to the door. "Miserable, really, but I
suppose we shall all pull together and cope. That is sorority, isn't
it?" The Head grasped her shawl and put a gentle hand on Galinda's
shoulder. Galinda shivered, and was sure Madame Morrible felt it, knew
it, but the Head never registered a sign of it. "But then, my use of
sorority-how ironic. Too witty. Given a long enough time, of course, a
wide enough frame, there is nothing said or done, ever, that isn't
ironic in the end." She squeezed Galinda's shoulder blade as if it were
a bicycle handle. almost harder than was proper for a woman to do. "We
can only hope- ha ha-that the sister comes with some veils of her own!
But that's year yet. Meanwhile we have time. Think about sorcery, would
you? Do Now good-bye, my pet, and fresh dreams."

Galinda walked back to her room slowly, wondering what Elphaba's sister
was like to provoke those catty remarks about veils. She wanted to ask
Elphaba. But she couldn't think of how to do it. She didn't have the nerve.


Boq
---

1
_____
Come on out," said the boys. "Come out." They were leaning in the
archway to Boq's room, a pell-mell clot of them, backlit by the oil lamp
in the study beyond. "We're sick of books. Come with us."

"Can't," said Boq. "I'm behind in irrigation theory."

"Fuck your irrigation theory when the pubs are open," said the strapping
Gillikinese bucko named Avaric. "You're not going to improve your grades
at this late date, with the exams almost over and the examiners
half-crocked themselves."

"It's not the grades," said Boq. "I just don't understand it yet."

"We're off to the pub, we're off to the pub," chanted some boys who, it
seemed, had gotten a head start. "Fuck Boq, the ale is waiting, and it's
already aged enough!"

"Which pub, then, maybe I'll join you in an hour," Boq said, sitting
firmly back in his chair and not lifting his feet to the footstool, as
he knew that this might incite his classmates to hoist him to their
shoulders and carry him off with them for an evening of debauchery. His
smallness seemed to inspire such banditry. Feet square on the floor made
him look more planted, he figured.

"The Boar and Fennel," said Avaric. "They've got a new witch performing.
They say she's hot. She's a Kumbric Witch."

"Hah," said Boq, unconvinced. "Well, go on and get a good view. I'll
come along when I can."

The boys rambled away, rattling doors of other friends, knocking aslant
the portraits of old boys now grown into august patrons. Avaric stood in
the archway and waited a minute longer. "We might ditch some

of the boors and take a select few of us off to the Philosophy Club," he
said enticingly. "Later on, I mean. It's the weekend, after all."

"Oh, Avaric, go take a cold shower," said Boq.

"You admitted you were curious. You did. So why not an end-of-semester
treat?"

"I'm sorry I ever said I was curious. I'm curious about death, too, but
I can wait to find out, thank you. Get lost, Avaric. Better go catch up
with your friends. Enjoy the Kumbric antics, which by the way I expect
is false advertising. Kumbric Witch talents went out hundreds of years
ago. If indeed they ever existed."

Avaric turned up the second collar of his tunic-jacket. The inside was
lined with a deep red velvet plush. Against his elegant shaven neck the
lining seemed like a single ribbon of privilege. Boq found himself, once
again, making mental comparisons between himself and handsome Avaric,
and coming up-well, coming up short. "What, Avaric," he said, as
impatient with himself as he was with his friend.

"Something has happened to you," said Avaric. "I'm not that dull. What's
wrong?"

"Nothing's wrong," said Boq.

"Tell me to mind my own business, tell me to go flick myself, to piss
off, go on, say it, but don't tell me nothing's wrong. For you're not
that good a liar, and I'm not that stupid. Even for a dissipated
Gillikinese of decaying nobility." His expression was soft, and Boq,
momentarily, was tempted. His mouth opened as he thought of what to say,
but at the sound of bells in Ozma Towers, chiming the hour, Avaric's
head turned just a fraction. For all his concern, Avaric wasn't entirely
here. Boq closed his mouth, thought some more, and said, "Call it
Munchkinlander stolidity. I won't lie, Avaric, you're too good a friend
to lie to. But there's nothing to say now. Now go on and enjoy yourself.
But be careful." He was about to add a word of warning against the
Philosophy Club, but checked it. If Avaric was annoyed enough, then
Boq's nannyish worrying might backfire and goad Avaric into going there.

Avaric came forward and kissed him on both cheeks and on the forehead,
an upper-class northern custom that always made Boq profoundly ill at
ease. Then with a wink and a dirty gesture, he disappeared.

Boq's room looked out over a cobblestoned alley, down which Avaric

and his cronies were swooping and weaving. Boq stood back, in the
shadows, but needn't have worried; his friends weren't thinking of him
now. They had made it through the halfway point in their exams and had a
breather for a couple of days. After the exams, the campus would lie
vacant except for the more befuddled of the professors and the poorer of
the boys. Boq had lived through this before. He preferred study,
however, to scrubbing old manuscripts with a five-haired reck-fur brush,
which was what he would be employed to do in the Three Queens library
all summer long.

Across the alley ran the bluestone wall of a private stable, attached to
some mansion house a few streets away on a fashionable square. Beyond
the stable roof you could see the rounded tops of a few fruit trees, in
the kitchen garden of Crage Hall, and above them glowed the lancet
windows of the dormitories and classrooms. When the girls forgot to draw
their drapes- which was astoundingly often-you could see them in various
stages of undress. Never the whole body naked, of course; in that case
he would have looked away, or told himself sternly that he had better.
But the pinkness and whiteness of underskirts and camisoles, the
filminess of foundation garments, the rustle about the bustle and the
fuss about the bust. It was an education in lingerie if nothing else.
Boq, who had no sisters, merely looked.

The Crage Hall dormitory was just far enough away that he couldn't make
out the individual girls. And Boq was flushed with desire to see his
heartthrob again. Damn! Double damn! He couldn't concentrate. He'd be
sent down if he queered his exams! He'd let down his father, old Bree,
and his village, and the other villages.

Hell and hell. Life was hard and barley just wasn't enough. Boq found
himself suddenly leaping over the footstool, grabbing his student cape,
charging down the corridors, and plummeting around the stone spiral
stairs in the corner tower. He couldn't wait any more. He had to do
something, and an idea had come to him.

He nodded to the porter on duty, turned left out of the gate, and
hurried along the road, in the dusk avoiding as best he could the
generous heaps of horse manure. At least with his classmates off
gallivanting, he would make no fool of himself in their line of vision.
There wasn't a soul left in Briscoe. So he turned left, then left again,
and soon was pacing the alley by the stable. A rick of cordwood, the
protruding edge of a swollen shutter, the iron bracket of a hoist. Boq
was small but he was nimble too,

and with hardly a scrape of his knuckles he had swung himself to the tin
gutter of the stable, and then was scrabbling like a lake crab up the
steeply pitched roof.

Aha! He might have thought of this weeks ago, months ago! But the night
that all the boys would be out celebrating, the night he could be sure
he himself wouldn't be seen from Briscoe Hall: that was tonight, and
maybe only tonight. Some fate had insisted he resist Avaric's invitation
out. For now he was mounted on the stable roof, and the wind coursing
through the wet leaves of the cranberry and pear trees made a soft
fanfare. And there proceeded the girls into their hall-as if they'd been
waiting in the corridor until he was properly positioned-as if they'd
known he was coming!

Closer up they were not, on the whole, as pretty.

But where was the one?

And pretty or not, they were clear. The fingers they dove into clumps of
satin bow, to untie them, the fingers they peeled gloves off with, and
worked cunning rows of forty miniature pearl buttons with, the fingers
they loaned to each other, at the inside laces and the private places
that college boys knew only by mythology! The unexpected tufts of
hair-how tender! How marvelously animal like! His hands clenched and
unclenched themselves, of their own accord, but hungry for what he
hardly knew-and where was she?

"What the hell are you doing up there?"

So he slipped, of course, because he was startled, and because fate,
having been so kind as to award him this ecstasy, retributively was
going to kill him now. He lost his footing and grabbed for the chimney
but missed. Head over thighs he rolled out like a child's toy, smashed
into the poking branches of the damn pear tree, which probably saved his
life, breaking his fall. He landed with a thud on a bed of lettuces, and
the wind was loudly knocked out of him, mortifyingly so, through all
available orifices.

"Oh, brilliant," said the voice. "The trees are dropping their fruits
early this year."

He had a last, lost hope that the person speaking would be his love. He
tried to look urbane, though his spectacles had bounced somewhere.

"How do you do," he said uncertainly, sitting up. "This isn't how I
intended to arrive."

Barefoot and aproned, she came out from behind an arbor of pink Pertha
grapes. It wasn't she, it wasn't the one. It was the other one. He could
tell even without his glasses. "Oh, it's you," he said, trying not to
sound devastated.

She had a colander with baby grapes in it, the sour ones used in spring
salads. "Oh, it's you," she said, coming closer. "I know you."

"Master Boq, at your service."

"You mean Master Boq, in my lettuces." She picked up his spectacles from
the runner beans, and handed them back.

"How are you, Miss Elphie?"

"I am not as tart as a grape and not as squished as a lettuce," she
said. "How are you, Master Boq?"

"I am," he said, "considerably embarrassed. Am I going to get in trouble
here?"

"I can arrange it if you like."

"Don't go to the effort. I'll let myself out the way I came in." He
looked up at the pear tree. "Poor thing, I've splintered some good-size
limbs."

"Pity the poor tree. Why would you do that to it?"

"Well, I was startled," he said, "and I had a choice: either flip myself
like a wood nymph through the leaves. Or else just climb quietly down on
the other side of the stable, into the street, and go back to my life.
Which would you choose?"

"Ah, that's the question," she said, "but I've always learned that the
first thing to do is deny the question's validity. Myself, being
startled, I would neither climb quietly streetward, nor would I trip
noisily treeward and lettuce bound. I would turn myself inside out to
make myself lighter, I would hover until the air pressure outside me had
stabilized. Then I would let the underside of my skin settle, one toe at
a time, back on the roof."

"And would you then reverse your skin?" he said, entertained.

"Depends on who was standing there and what they wanted, and whether I
minded. Also depends on what color the underside of my skin turns out to
be. Never having reversed myself, you know, I can't be sure. I always
thought it might be horrid to be pink and white like a piglet."

"It often is," said Boq. "Especially in the shower. You feel like an

underdone-" But he stopped. The nonsense was becoming too personal. "I
do beg your pardon," he said. "I startled you and I didn't mean to."

"You were looking at the tops of the fruit trees, examining the new
growth, I assume?" she said, amused.

"Indeed," he answered coldly.

"Did you see the tree of your dreams?"

"The tree of my dreams is of my dreams, and I don't speak of that to my
friends nor to you, whom I hardly know."

"Oh, but you know me. We were in a child play set together, you reminded
me when we met last year. Why, we're nearly brother and sister. You can
certainly describe your favorite tree to me, and I'll tell you if I know
where she grows."

"You mock me, Miss Elphie."

"Well, that I don't mean to do, Boq." She used his name without the
honorific in a gentle way, as if to underscore her comment about their
being like siblings. "I suspect you want to know about Miss Galinda, the
Gillikinese girl you met at Madame Morrible's poetry slaughter last autumn."

"Perhaps you do know me better than I thought." He sighed. "Could I hope
she thinks of me?"

"Well, you could hope," said Elphaba. "It would be more efficient to ask
her and have done with it. At least you'd know."

"But you're a friend of hers, aren't you? Don't you know?"

"You don't want to rely on what I know or not," said Elphaba, "or what I
say I know. I could be lying. I could be in love with you, and betray my
roomie by lying about her-"

"She's your roomie?"

"You're very surprised at that?"

"Well-no-just-just pleased."

"The cooks will be wondering what dialogues with the asparagus I'm
having now," Elphaba said. "I could arrange to bring Miss Galinda here
some evening if you like. Sooner rather than later, so as to kill your
joy the more neatly and entirely. If that is what's to happen," she
said, "but as I say, how do I know? If I can't predict what we'll have
for pudding, how can I predict someone's affections?"

They set a date for three nights hence, and Boq thanked Elphaba
fervently, shaking her hand so hard his spectacles jounced on his nose.
"You're a dear old friend, Elphie, even if I haven't seen you in fifteen
years," he said, giving her back her name without its honorific. She
withdrew beneath the boughs of the pear trees and disappeared down the
walkway. Boq found his way out of the kitchen garden and back to his
room, and reviewed his books again, but the problem wasn't solved, no,
not solved. It was exacerbated. He couldn't concentrate. He was still
awake to hear the noisy clatterings, the hushings, the crashings, and
the muttered ballatherings, when the drunken boys returned to Briscoe Hall.


2
_____
Avaric had left for the summer, once the exams were done, and Boq either
had flimflammed his way through or disgraced himself, in which case
there was little to lose now. This first rendezvous with Galinda might
be the last. Boq bothered with his clothes more than usual, and got an
opinion on how to fix his hair from the new look in the cafes (a thin
white ribbon around the crown of his head, pulling his hair straight
from the nub, so that it burst into curls beneath, like froth exploding
from an overturned basin of milk). He cleaned his boots several times
over. It was too warm for boots but he had no evening slippers. Make do,
make do.

On the appointed evening he retraced his way and, on the stable roof,
found that a fruit picker's ladder had been left leaning up against the
wall, so he need not descend through the leaves like a vertiginous
chimpanzee. He picked his way carefully down the first few rungs, then
jumped manfully the rest of the way, avoiding the lettuces this time. On
a bench under the wormnut trees sat Elphaba, her knees drawn casually up
to her chest and her bare feet flat on the seat of the bench, and
Galinda, whose ankles were crossed daintily and who hid behind a satin
fan, and who was looking in the other direction anyway.

"Well, my stars and garters, a visitor," said Elphaba. "Such a surprise."

"Good evening, ladies," he said.

"Your head looks like a hedgehog in shock, what did you do to yourself?"
said Elphaba. At least Galinda turned to see, but then she disappeared
behind the fan again. Could she be so nervous? Could her heart be faint?

"Well I am part Hedgehog, didn't I tell you?" said Boq. "On my
grandfather's side. He ended up as cutlets for Ozma's retinue one
hunting season, and a tasty memory for all. The recipe is handed down in
the family, pasted into the picture album. Served with cheese and walnut
sauce. Mmmm."

"Are you really?" said Elphaba. She put her chin on her knees. "Really
Hedgehog?"

"No, it was a fancy. Good evening, Miss Galinda. It was good of you to
agree to meet me again."

"This is highly improper," said Gallinda. "For a number of reasons, as
you well know, Master Boq. But my roomie would give me no rest until I
said yes. I can't say that I am pleased to see you again."

"Oh, say it, say it, maybe it'll make it true," said Elphaba. "Try it
out. He's not so bad. For a poor boy."

"I am pleased that you are so taken with me, Master Boq," said Miss
Galinda, working at courtesy. "I am flattered." She clearly was not
flattered, she was humiliated. "But you must see that there can be no
special friendship between us. Apart from the matter of my feelings,
there are too many social impediments for us to proceed. I only agreed
to come so that I could tell you this in person. It seemed only fair."

"It seemed only fair and it might be fun, too," said Elphaba. "That's
why I'm hanging around."

"There's the issue of different cultures, to start," said Galinda. "I
know you are a Munchkinlander. I am a Gillikinese. I will need to marry
one of my own. It is the only way, I'm sorry"-she lowered her fan and
lifted her hand, palm out, to stop his protest-"and furthermore you are
a farmer, from the agricultural school, and I require a statesman or a
banker from Ozma Towers. This is just how things are. Besides," said
Galinda, "you're too short."

"What about his subversion of custom by coming here this way, what about
his silliness?" said Elphaba.

"Enough," said Galinda. "That'll do, Miss Elphaba."

"Please, you're too certain of yourself," said Boq. "If I may behold."

"You're not so bold at all," said Elphaba, "you're about as bold as tea
made from used leaves. You're embarrassing me with hanging back so. Come
on, say something interesting. I'm starting to wish I'd gone to chapel."

"You're interrupting," said Boq. "Miss Elphie, you've done a wonderful
thing to encourage Miss Galinda to meet me, but I must ask you to leave
us alone to sort things out."

"Neither of you will understand what the other is saying," said Elphaba
calmly. "I'm a Munchkinlander by birth anyway, if not by upbringing, and
I'm a girl by accident if not by choice. I'm the natural arbiter between
you two. I don't believe you can get along without me. In fact if I
leave the garden you'll cease to decipher each other's language
entirely. She speaks the tongue of Rich, you speak Clotted Poor.
Besides, I paid for this show by wheedling Miss Galinda for three days
running. I get to watch."

"It would be so good of you to stay, Miss Elphaba," said Galinda, "I
require a chaperone when with a boy."

"See what I mean?" Elphaba said to Boq.

"Then if you must stay, at least let me talk," Boq said. "Please let me
speak, just for a few minutes, Miss Galinda. What you say is true. You
are highborn and I am common. You are Gillikinese and I, Munchkinlander.
You have a social pattern to conform to, and so do I. And mine doesn't
include marrying a girl too wealthy, too foreign, too expectant.
Marriage isn't what I came here to propose."

"See, I'm glad I didn't leave, this is just getting good," said Elphaba,
but clamped her lips shut when they both glared at her.

"I came here to propose that we meet from time to time, that's all,"
said Boq. "That we meet as friends. That, free of expectations, we come
to know each other as dear friends. I do not deny that you overwhelm me
with your beauty. You are the moon in the season of shadowlight; you are
the fruit of the candlewood tree; you are the phoenix in circles of flight-"

"This sounds rehearsed," said Elphaba.

"You are the mythical sea," he concluded, all his eggs in one basket.

"I'm not much for poetry," said Galinda. "But you're very kind." She had
seemed to perk up a little at the compliments. Anyway the fan was moving
faster. "I don't really understand the point of friendship, as

you call it, Master Boq, between unmarried people of our age. It seems-
distracting. I can see it might lead to complications, especially as you
confess to an infatuation I cannot hope to return. Not in a million years."

"It's the age of daring," said Boq. "It's the only time we have. We must
live in the present. We are young and alive."

"I don't know if alive quite covers it," said Elphaba. "This sounds
scripted to me."

Galinda rapped Elphaba on the head with her fan, which folded smartly up
and opened just as neatly again, an elegant practiced gesture that
impressed all of them. "You're being tiresome, Miss Elphie. I appreciate
your company but I didn't request a running commentary. I'm perfectly
capable of deciding the merits of Master Boq's recital myself. Let me
consider his stupid idea. Lurline above, I can hardly hear myself think!"

Losing her temper, Galinda was prettier than ever. So that old saw was
true, too. Boq was learning so much about girls! Her fan was dropping.
Was that a good sign? If she hadn't had some affection for him, would
she have worn a dress with a neckline that dipped just a tad lower than
he had dared hope? And there was the essence of rose water on her. He
felt a surge of possibility, an inclination to rub his lips on the place
where her shoulder became her neck.

"Your merits," she was saying. "Well, you're brave, I suppose, and
clever, to have figured this out. If Madame Morrible ever found you here
we'd be in severe trouble. Of course you might not know that, so scratch
the bravery part. Just clever. You're clever and you're sort of, oh,
well, I mean to look at-"

"Handsome?" suggested Elphaba. "Dashing?"

"You're fun to look at," decided Galinda.

Boq's face fell. "Fun?" he said.

"I'd give a lot to achieve fun," Elphaba said. "The best I usually hope
for is stirring, and when people say that they're usually referring to
digestion-"

"Well, I might be all or none of the things you say," said Boq
staunchly, "but you will learn that I am persistent. I will not let you
say no to our friendship, Galinda. It means too much to me."

"Behold the male beast roaring in the jungle for his mate," said
Elphaba. "See how the female beast giggles behind a shrub while she

organizes her face to say, Pardon dear, did you say something?"

"Elphaba!" they both cried at her.

"My word, duckie!" said a voice behind them, and all three turned. It
was some middle-aged minder in a striped apron, her thinning gray hair
twisted in a knot on her head. "What are you getting yourself up to?"

"Ama Clutch!" Galinda said. "How did you think to look for me here?"

"That Tsebra cook told me some yacky-yacky was going on out here. You
think they're blind in there? Now who is this? This don't look good at
all, not to me."

Boq stood. "I am Master Boq of Rush Margins, Munchkinland. I am nearly a
third-year fellow at Briscoe Hall."

Elphaba yawned. "Is this show over?"

"Well, I am shocked! A guest don't get shown into the vegetable garden,
so I guess you arrived uninvited! Sir, get yourself gone from here
before I be calling the porters to remove you!"

"Oh, Ama Clutch, don't make a scene," said Galinda, sighing.

"He's hardly developed enough to worry about," pointed out Elphaba.
"Look, he's still beardless. And from that we can deduce-"

Boq said in a rush, "Perhaps this is all wrong. I did not come here to
be abused. Forgive me, Miss Galinda, if I have failed even to amuse you.
As for you, Miss Elphaba"-his voice was as cold as he could make it, and
that was colder than he'd ever heard it himself-"I was wrong to have
trusted in your compassion."

"Wait and see," said Elphaba. "Wrong takes an awful long time to be
proven, in my experience. Meanwhile, why don't you come back sometime?"

"There is no second time to this," said Ama Clutch, tugging at Galinda,
who was proving as sedentary as set cement. "Miss Elphaba, shame on you
for encouraging this scandal."

"Nothing here has been perpetrated but badinage, and bad badinage at
that," said Elphaba. "Miss Galinda, you're mighty stubborn there. You're
planting yourself in the vegetable garden for good in the hopes that
this Boy Visitation might occur again? Have we misread your interest?"

Galinda stood at last with some dignity. "My dear Master Boq," she said,
as if dictating, "it was ever my intention to dissuade you from pursuing
me, in romantic attachment or even in friendship, as you put it. I had

not meant to bruise you. It is not in my nature." At this Elphaba rolled
her eyes, but for once kept her mouth shut, perhaps because Ama Clutch
had dug her fingernails into Elphaba's elbow. "I will not deign to
arrange another meeting like this. As Ama Clutch reminds me, it is
beneath me." Ama Clutch hadn't exactly said that, but even so, she
nodded grimly. "But if our paths cross in a legitimate way, Master Boq,
I will do you the courtesy at least of not ignoring you. I trust you
will be satisfied with that."

"Never," said Boq with a smile, "but it's a start."

"And now good evening," said Ama Clutch on behalf of them all, and
steered the girls away. "Fresh dreams, Master Boq, and don't come back!"

"Miss Elphie, you were horrible," he heard Galinda say, while Elphaba
twisted around and waved good-bye with a grin he could not clearly read.


3
______
So the summer began. Since he passed the exams, Boq was free to plan one
last year at Briscoe Hall. Daily he hid himself over to the library at
Three Queens, where under the watchful eye of a titanic Rhinoceros, the
head archival librarian, he sat cleaning old manuscripts that clearly
weren't looked at more than once a century. When the Rhino was out of
the room, he had flighty conversations with the two boys on either side
of him, classic Queens boys, full of gibbering gossip and arcane
references, teasing and loyal. He enjoyed them when they were in good
spirits, and he detested their sulks. Crope and Tibbett. Tibbett and
Crope. Boq pretended confusion when they got too arch or suggestive,
which seemed to happen about once a week, but they backed off quickly.
In the afternoons they would all take their cheese sandwiches by the
banks of the Suicide Canal and watch the swans. The strong boys at crew,
coursing up and down the canal for summer practice, made Crope and
Tibbett swoon and fall on their faces in the grass. Boq laughed at them,
not unkindly, and waited for fate to deliver Galinda back into his path.

It wasn't too long a wait. About three weeks after their vegetable
garden liaison, on a windy summer morning, a small earthquake caused
some minor damage in the Three Queens library, and the building had to
be closed for some patching. Tibbett, Crope, and Boq took their
sandwiches, with some beakers of tea from the buttery, and they flopped down

at their favorite place on the grassy banks of the canal. Fifteen
minutes later, along came Ama Clutch with Galinda and two other girls.

"I do believe we know you," said Ama Clutch as Galinda stood demurely a
step behind. In cases such as these it was the servant's duty to elicit
names from the strangers in the group, so that they might greet each
other personally. Ama Clutch registered out loud that they were Masters
Boq, Crope, and Tibbett, meeting Misses Galinda, Shenshen, and Pfannee.
Then Ama Clutch moved a few feet away to allow the young people to
address one another.

Boq leaped up and gave a small bow, and Galinda said, "As in line with
my promise, Master Boq, may I enquire how you're keeping?"

"Very well, thank you," said Boq.

"He's ripe as a peach," said Tibbett.

"He's downright luscious, from this angle," said Crope, sitting a few
steps behind, but Boq turned and glared so fiercely that Crope and
Tibbett were chastened, and fell into a mock sulk.

"And you, Miss Galinda?" continued Boq, searching her well-composed
face. "You are well? How thrilling to see you in Shin for the summer."
But that wasn't the right thing to say. The better girls went home for
the summer, and Galinda as a Gillikinese must feel it deeply that she
was stuck here, like a Munchkinlander or a commoner! The fan came up.
The eyes went down. The Misses Shenshen and Pfannee touched her
shoulders in mute sympathy. But Galinda sallied on.

"My dear friends the Misses Pfannee and Shenshen are taking a house for
the month of Highsummer on the shores of Lake Chorge. A little fantasy
house near the village of Neverdale. I've decided to make my holiday
there instead of taking that tiresome trek back to the Pertha Hills."

"How refreshing." He saw the beveled edges of her lacquered fingernails,
the moth-colored eyelashes, the glazed and buffed softness of cheek, the
sensitive tuck of skin just at the cleft of her upper lip. In the summer
morning light, she was dangerously, inebriatingly magnified.

"Steady," said Crope, and he and Tibbett jumped up and they each caught
Boq by an elbow. He then remembered to breathe. He couldn't think of
anything else to say though, and Ama Clutch was turning her handbag
around and around in her hand.

"So we've got jobs," said Tibbett, to the rescue. "The Three Queens
library. We're housekeeping the literature. We're the cleaning maids of
culture. Are you working, Miss Galinda?"

"I should think not," said Galinda. "I need a rest from my studies. It
has been a harrowing year, harrowing. My eyes are still tired from reading."

"How about you girls?" said Crope, outrageously casual. But they only
giggled and demurred and inched away. This was their friend's encounter,
not theirs. Boq, regaining his composure, could feel the group beginning
to shift itself into motion again. "And Miss Elphie?" he enquired, to
hold them there. "How is your roomie?"

"Headstrong and difficult," said Galinda severely, for the first time
speaking in a normal voice, not the faint social whisper. "But, thank
Lurline, she's got a job, so I get some relief. She's working in the lab
and the library under our Doctor Dillamond. Do you know of him?"

"Doctor Dillamond? Do I know of him?" said Boq. "He's the most
impressive biology tutor in Shiz."

"By the by," said Galinda, "he's a Goat."

"Yes, yes. I wish he would teach us. Even our professors acknowledge his
prominence. Apparently, years ago, back in the reign of the

Regent, and before, he used to be invited annually to lecture at Briscoe

Hall. But the restrictions changed even that, so I've never really met him.

Just to see him at that poetry evening, last year, so briefly, was a treat-"

"Well he does go on," said Galinda. "Brilliant he may be, but he has no
sense of when he's become tedious. Anyway, Miss Elphie's hard at work,
doing something or other. She will go on about it, too. I think it's
contagious!"

"Well, a lab, it breeds things," said Crope.

"Yes," said Tibbett, "and incidentally may I add that you're every bit
as lovely as Boq gushes you are. We'd put it down to an overactive
imagination born of affectional and physical frustration-"

"You know," said Boq, "between your Miss Elphie and my erstwhile friends
here, we have no real hope of friendship at all. Shall we organize a
duel and kill each other instead? Count off ten paces, turn and shoot?
It would save so much bother."

But Galinda didn't approve of such joking. She nodded in a dismissive
way, and the group of females moved out along the graveled path,
following the curve of the canal. Miss Shenshen was heard to say in a
deep, breathy voice, "Oh, my dear, he is sweet, in a toylike way."

The voice faded out, Boq turned to rail at Crope and Tibbett, but they
fell to tickling him and they all collapsed in a heap on the remains of
their lunch. And since there was no hope in changing them, Boq abandoned
the impulse to correct his friends. Really, what difference did their
callow banter make if Miss Galinda found him so impossible?


A week or two later, on his afternoon off, Boq took himself in to
Railway Square. He lingered at a kiosk, staring. Cigarettes, ersatz love
charms, naughty drawings of women undressing, and scrolls painted with
lurid sunsets, overladen with one-line inspirational slogans. "Lurline
Lives on Within Each Heart." "Safe Keep the Wizard's Laws, and the
Wizard's Laws Will Keep You Safe." "I Pray to the Unnamed God That
Justice Will Walk Abroad in Oz." Boq noted the variety: the pagan, the
authoritarian, and the old-fashioned unionist impulses.

But nothing directly sympathetic to the royalists, who had gone
underground in the sixteen harsh years since the Wizard had first
wrested power from the Ozma Regent. The Ozma line had been Gillikinese
originally, and surely there were active pockets of resistance to the
Wizard? But Gillikin had, in fact, thrived under the Wizard, so the
royalists kept mum. Besides, everyone had heard the rumors of strict
court action against turncoats and peristrophists.

Boq bought a broadsheet published out of the Emerald City-several weeks
old, but it was the first he'd seen in some time-and he settled down at
a cafe. He read about the Emerald City Home Guard suppressing some
Animal dissenters, who were making a nuisance of themselves in the
palace gardens. He looked for news of the provinces, and found a filler
about Munchkinland, which continued experiencing near-drought
conditions; occasional thunderbursts would drench the ground, but the
water would run off or sink uselessly into the clay. They said that
hidden subterranean lakes underlay the Vinkus region, that water
resources there could serve the whole of Oz. But the idea of a canal
system across the entire country made everyone laugh. The expense! There
was great disagreement between the Eminences and the Emerald City as to
what was to be done.

Secession, thought Boq seditiously, and looked up to see Uphaba, alone,
without even a nanny or Ama, standing over him.

"What a delicious expression you have on your face, Boq," she said.
"It's much more interesting than love."

"It is love, in a way," said Boq, then remembered himself, and leaped to
his feet. "Won't you join me? Please, take a seat. Unless you're worried
about being unchaperoned."

She sat down, looking a bit etiolated, and allowed him to call for a cup
of mineral tea. She had a parcel in brown paper and string under her
arm. "A few trinkets for my sister," she said. "She's like Miss Galinda,
she loves the fancy outside of things. I found a Vinkus shawl in the
bazaar, red roses on a black background, with black and green fringe.
I'm sending it to her, and a pair of striped stockings that Ama Clutch
knitted for me."

"I didn't know you had a sister," he said. "Was she in the play group we
were in together?"

"She's three years younger," Elphaba said. "She'll come to Crage Hall
before long."

"Is she as difficult as you are?"

"She's difficult in a different way. She's crippled, pretty severely, is
my Nessarose, so she's a handful. Even Madame Morrible doesn't quite
know the extent of it. But by then I'll be a third-year girl and will
have the nerve to stand up to the Head, I guess. If anything gives me
nerve, it's people making life hard for Nessarose. Life is already hard
enough for her."

"Is your mama raising her?"

"My mother is dead. My father is in charge, nominally."

"Nominally?"

"He's religious," said Elphaba, and made the circling palms gesture that
indicated you could grind millstone against millstone all you liked, but
there wasn't any quern in the land that could produce flour if there was
no grain to grind.

"It sounds very hard for you all. How did your mama die?"

"She died in childbirth, and this is the end of the personal interview."

"Tell me about Doctor Dillamond. I hear you're working for him."

"Tell me about your amusing campaign for the heart of Galinda the Ice
Queen."

Boq really wanted to hear about Doctor Dillamond, but was derailed by
Elphaba's remark. "I will keep on, Elphie, I will! When I see her I'm so
smitten with longing, it's like fire in my veins. I can't speak, and the
things I think about are like visions. It's like dreaming. It's like
floating in your dreams."

"I don't dream."

"Tell me, is there any hope? What does she say? Does she ever even
imagine that her feelings for me might change?"

Elphaba sat with her two elbows on the table, her hands clasped in front
of her face, her two forefingers leaning against each other and against
her thin, grayish lips. "You know, Boq," she said, "the thing is I have
become fond of Galinda myself. Behind her starry-eyed love of herself
there is a mind struggling to work. She does think about things. When
her mind is really working, she could, if led, think on you-even, I
suspect, somewhat fondly. I suspect. I don't know. But when she slides
back into herself, I mean into the girl who spends two hours a day
curling that beautiful hair, it's as if the thinking Galinda goes into
some internal closet and shuts the door. Or as if she's in hysterical
retreat from things that are too big for her. I love her both ways, but
I find it odd. I wouldn't mind leaving myself behind if I could, but I
don't know the way out."

"I propose you're being hard on her, and you're certainly too forward,"
said Boq sternly. "Were she sitting here I think she'd be astounded to
hear you speak so freely."

"I'm just trying to behave as I think a friend should behave. Granted, I
haven't had much practice."

"Well, I question your friendship with me, If you consider Miss Galinda
your friend too, and if that's how you tear a friend apart in her absence."

Though Boq was irritated, he found that this was a more lively
discussion than the conventional patter he and Galinda had so far
exchanged. He didn't want to burn Elphaba off with criticism. "I'm
ordering you another mineral tea," he said, in an authoritative voice,
his father's voice in fact, "and then you can tell me about Doctor
Dillamond."

"Skip the tea, I'm still nursing this one and you have no more money
than I do, I bet," said Elphaba, "but I'll tell you about Doctor
Dillamond. Unless you are too affronted at the slice and angle of my
opinions."

"Please, perhaps I am wrong," said Boq. "Look, it's a nice day, we're
both off the campus. How do you come to be out alone, by the way? Is
your escape sanctioned by Madame Morrible?"

"Take a guess about that," she said, "Once it was clear that you could
come and go from Crage Hall by way of the vegetable garden and the roof
of the adjacent stable, I decided I could too. I'm never missed."

"That's hard for me to believe," said he, daringly, "for you're not the
kind who blends into the woodwork. Now tell me about Doctor Dillamond.
He's my Idol."

She sighed, and set the package down on the table at last, and settled
in for a long chat. She told him about Doctor Dillamond's work in
natural essences, trying to determine by scientific method what the real
differences were between animal and Animal tissue, and between Animal
and human tissue. The literature on the matter, she had learned from
doing the legwork herself, was all couched in unionist terms, and pagan
terms before that, and they didn't hold up to scientific scrutiny.
"Don't forget Shiz University was originally a unionist monastery," said
Elphaba, "so despite the anything-goes attitude among the educated
elite, there are still bedrocks of unionist bias."

"But I'm a unionist," said Boq, "and I don't see the conflict. The
Unnamed God is accommodating to many ranges of being, not just human.
Are you talking about a subtle bias against Animals, interwoven into
early unionist tracts, and still in operation today?"

"That's certainly what Doctor Dillamond thinks. And he's a unionist
himself. Explain that paradox and I'd be glad to convert. I admire the
Goat intensely. But the real interest of it to me is the political
slant. If he can isolate some bit of the biological architecture to
prove that there isn't any difference, deep down in the invisible
pockets of human and Animal flesh-that there's no difference between
us-or even among us, if you take in animal flesh too-well, you see the
implications."

"No," said Boq, "I don't think I do."

"How can the Banns on Animal Mobility be upheld if Doctor Dillamond can
prove, scientifically, that there isn't any inherent difference between
humans and Animals?"

"Oh, now that's a blueprint for an impossibly rosy future," said Boq.

"Think about it," said Elphaba. "Think, Boq. On what grounds could the
Wizard possibly continue to publish those Banns?"

"How could he be persuaded not to? The Wizard has dissolved the Hall of
Approval indefinitely. I don't believe, Elphie, that the Wizard is open
to entertaining arguments, even by as august an Animal as Doctor Dillamond."

"But of course he must be. He's a man in power, it's his job to consider
changes in knowledge. When Doctor Dillamond has his proof, he'll write
to the Wizard and begin to lobby for change. No doubt he'll do his best
to let Animals the land over know what he's intending, too. He isn't a
fool."

"Well I didn't say he was a fool," said Boq. "But how close do you think
he is to getting firm evidence?"

"I am a student handmaid," said Elphaba. "I don't even understand what
he means. I'm only a secretary, an amanuensis-you know he can't write
things himself, he can't manage a pen with his hoofs. I take dictation
and I file and I dash to the Crage Hall library and look things up."

"Briscoe Hall library would be a better place to hunt for that kind of
material," said Boq. "Even Three Queens, where I work this summer, has
stacks of documents from the monks' observations of animal and vegetable
life."

"I know I am not traditionally presented," said Elphaba, "but I believe
on the grounds of being a girl I am excluded from the Briscoe Hall
library. And on the grounds of being an Animal so too, now at least, is
Doctor Dillamond. So those valuable resources are off limits to us."

"Well," said Boq carelessly, "if you knew exactly what you wanted . I
have access to the stacks in both collections."

"And when the good Doctor is finished ferreting out the difference
between Animals and people, I will propose he apply the same arguments
to the differences between the sexes," said Elphaba. Then she registered
what Boq had said, and stretched out her hand, almost as if to touch
him. "Oh Boq. Boq. On behalf of Doctor Dillamond, I accept your generous
offer of help. I'll get the first list of sources to you within the
week. Just leave my name out of it. I don't care so much about incurring
Horrible Morrible's wrath against myself, but I don't want her taking
out her annoyance on my sister, Nessarose."

She downed the last of her tea, gathered her parcel, and had sprung up
almost before Boq could pull himself to his feet. Various customers,
lingering over their elevenses with their own broadsheets or novellas,
looked up at the ungainly girl pushing out the doors. As Boq settled
back down, hardly yet registering what he had gotten himself into, he
realized, slowly but thoroughly, that this morning there were no Animals
taking their morning tea in here. No Animals at all.


4
_____
In years to come-and Boq would live a long life-he would remember the
rest of the summer as scented with the must of old books, when ancient
script swam before his eyes. He sleuthed alone in the musty stacks, he
hovered over the mahogany drawers lined with vellum manuscripts. All
season long, it seemed, the lozenge-paned windows between bluestone
mullions and transoms misted over again and again with flecks of small
but steady rain, almost as brittle and pesky as sand. Apparently the
rain never made it as far as Munchkinland-but Boq tried not to think
about that.

Crope and Tibbett were coerced into researching for Doctor Dillamond,
too. At first they had to be dissuaded from going about their forays in
costumes of disguise-fake pince-nez, powdered wigs, cloaks with high
collars, all to be found in the well-stocked locker of the Three Queens
Student Theatrical and Terpsichorean Society. But when convinced of the
seriousness of the mission, they fell to with gusto. Once a week they
met Boq and Elphaba in the cafe in Railway Square. Elphaba showed up,
during these misty weeks, entirely swathed in a brown cloak with a hood
and veil that hid all but her eyes. She wore long, frayed gray gloves
that she boasted buying secondhand from a local undertaker, cheap for
having been used in funeral services. She sheathed her bamboo-pole legs
in a double thickness of cotton stocking. The first time Boq saw Elphaba
like this, he said, "I just barely manage to convince Crope and Tibbett
to lose the espionage drag, and you come in looking like the original
Kumbric Witch."

"I don't dress for your approval, boys," she said, shucking her cloak
and folding it inside out so that the wet wool never touched her. On the

occasion when another care patron would come through, shaking water off
an umbrella, Elphaba always recoiled, flinching if she was caught by
even a scattering of drops.

"Is that religious conviction, Elphie, that you keep yourself so dry?"
said Boq.

"I've told you before, I don't comprehend religion, although conviction
is a concept I'm beginning to get. In any case, someone with a real
religious conviction is, I propose, a religious convict, and deserves
locking up."

"Hence," observed Crope, "your aversion to all water. Without your
knowing it, it might be a baptismal splash, and then your liberty as a
free-range agnostic would be curtailed."

"I thought you were too self-absorbed to notice my spiritual pathology,"
said Elphaba. "Now, boys, what've we got today?"

Every time, Boq thought: Would that Galinda were here. For the casual
camaraderie that grew up among them during these weeks was so
refreshing-a model of ease and even wit. Against convention they had
dropped the honorifics. They interrupted one another and laughed and
felt bold and important because of the secrecy of their mission. Crope
and Tibbett cared little about Animals or the Banns-they were both
Emerald City boys, sons, respectively, of a tax collector and of a
palace security advisor-but Elphaba's passionate belief in the work
enlivened them. Boq himself grew more involved, too. He imagined Galinda
drawing her chair up with them, losing her upper-crust reserve, allowing
her eyes to glow with a shared and secret purpose.

"I thought I knew all the shapes of passion," Elphaba said one bright
afternoon. "I mean, growing up with a unionist minister for a father.
You come to expect that theology is the fundament on which all other
thought and belief is based. But boys!-this week, Doctor Dillamond made
some sort of a scientific breakthrough. I'm not sure what it was, but it
involved manipulating lenses, a pair of them, so he could peer at bits
of tissue that he had laid on a transparent glass and backlit by
candlelight. He began to dictate, and he was so excited that he sang his
findings; he composed arias out of what he was seeing! Recitatives about
structure, about color, about the basic shapes of organic life. He has a
horrible sandpapery voice, as you might imagine for a Goat;

but how he warbled! Tremolo on the annotations, vibrato on the
interpretations, and sostenuto on the implications: long, triumphant
open vowels of discovery! I was sure someone would hear. I sang with
him, I read his notes back to him like a student of musical composition."

The good Doctor was emboldened by his findings, and he required that
their digging become more and more focused. He did not want to announce
any breakthroughs until he had figured out the most politically
advantageous way to present them. Toward the end of the summer the push
was on to find Lurlinist and early unionist disquisitions on how the
Animals and the animals had been created and differentiated. "It's not a
matter of uncovering a scientific theory by a prescientific company of
unionist monks or pagan priests and priestesses," explained Elphaba.
"But Doctor Dillamond wants to authenticate the way our ancestors
thought about this. The Wizard's right to impose unjust laws may be
better challenged if we know how the old codgers explained it to
themselves."

It was an interesting exercise.

"In one form or another, we all know some of the origin myths that
predate the Oziad," said Tibbett, throwing his blond bangs back with a
theatrical flourish. "The most coherent one has our dear putative Fairy
Queen Lurline on a voyage. She was tired of travel in the air. She
stopped and called from the desert sands a font of water hidden deep
beneath the earth's dry dunes. The water obeyed, in such abundance that
the land of Oz in all its febrile variety sprang up almost instantly.
Lurline drank herself into a stupor and went for a long rest on the top
of Mount Runcible. When she awoke, she relieved herself copiously, and
this became the Gillikin River, running around the vast tracts of the
Great Gillikin Forest and skirting through the eastern edges of the
Vinkus, and coming to a stop at Restwater. The animals were terricolous
and thus of a lower order than Lurline and her retinue. Don't look at me
like that, I know what that word means-I looked it up. It means living
on or near the ground.

"The animals had come into their being as rolled clots of earth
dislodged from the exuberant plant growth. When Lurline let loose, the
animals thought the raging stream was a flood, sent to drown their fresh
new world, and they despaired of their existence. In a panic they flung
themselves into the torrent and attempted to swim through Lurline's
urine. Those who became intimidated and turned back remained animals,

beasts of burden, slaughtered for flesh, hunted for fun, counted as
profit, admired as innocent. Those who swam on and made it to the
farther shore were given the gifts of consciousness and language."

"What a gift, to be able to imagine your own death," muttered Crope.

"Thus, Animals. Convention, as long ago as history can remember, divides
the animals and Animals."

"Baptism by piss," said Elphaba. "Is that a subtle way both to explain
the talents of Animals and to denigrate them at the same time?"

"And what of the animals who drowned?" asked Boq. "They must have been
the real losers."

"Or the martyrs."

"Or the ghosts who live underground now and stop up the water supply so
the fields of Munchkinland dry up today."

They all laughed and had more tea brought to the table.

"I've found some later scriptures with a more unionist slant," Boq said.
"They tell a story that I guess would be derived from the pagan
narrative, but it has been cleaned up some. The flood, occurring
sometime after creation and before the advent of humankind, wasn't a
massive piss by Lurline, but the sea of tears wept by the Unnamed God on
the god's only visit to Oz. The Unnamed God perceived the sorrow that
would overwhelm the land throughout time, and bawled in pain. The whole
of Oz was a mile deep in saltwater tides. The animals kept afloat by
means of the odd log, the uprooted tree. Those who swallowed enough of
the tears of the Unnamed God were imbued with a fulsome sympathy for
their kin, and they began to construct rafts from the flotsam. They
saved their kind out of mercy, and from their kindness they became a
new, sentient lot: the Animals."

"Another kind of baptism, from within," said Tibbett. "Ingestion. I like
it."

"But what of the pleasure faith?" said Crope. "Can a witch or a sorcerer
take an animal and, through a spell, create an Animal?"

"Well, that's the thing I've been looking into," said Elphaba. "The
pleasure fathers-the fathers-say that if anything-Lurline or the Unnamed
God-could have done it once, magic could do it again. They even hint
that the original distinction between Animals and animals was a Kumbric
Witch spell, so strong and enduring it has never worn off. This


a thing as a Kumbric Witch, let alone if there ever was. Myself, I think
it's

a part of the Lurlinist cycle that's gotten detached and developed
independently. Arrant nonsense. We have no proof that magic is so strong-"

"We have no proof that god is so strong," interrupted Tibbett.

"Which strikes me as being as good an argument against god as it is
against magic," said Elphaba, "but never mind that. The point is, if it
is an enduring Kumbric spell, centuries old, it may be reversible. Or it
may be perceived to be reversible, which is just as bad. In the interim,
while sorcerers are at work experimenting with charms and spells, the
Animals lose their rights, one by one. Just slowly enough so that it's
hard to see as a coherent political campaign. It's a dicey scenario, and
one that Doctor Dillamond hasn't figured out-"

At this point Elphaba hitched the loose part of her cloak up over her
head, and disappeared into the shadows of Its folds. "What?" said Boq,
but she put a finger to her lips. Crope and Tibbett, as if on cue,
launched into some silly banter about their professional goals of being
abducted by pirates of the desert and made to dance the fandango dressed
only in slave shackles. Boq saw nothing amiss: A couple of clerks
reading the racing forms, some genteel ladies with their lemonades and
novellas, a tiktok creature buying coffee beans by the pound, a parody
of an old professor figuring out some theorem by arranging and
rearranging some sugar cubes along the edge of his butter knife.

A few minutes later, Elphaba relaxed. "That tiktok thing works at Crage
Hall. I think it's called Grommetik. Usually it shadows Madame Morrible
like a lovesick puppy. I don't think it saw me."

But she was too jittery to continue the conversation, and after she made
sure their next assignments were clear, the crew disbanded into the
misty streets.


5
______
Two weeks before Briscoe Hall reconvened for the new semester, Avaric
returned from his home, the seat of the Margreave of Tenmeadows. He was
bronzed with summer leisure and eager for fun. He mocked Boq for having
struck up friendships with boys from Three

Queens, and under other circumstances Boq would probably have let his
new alliance with Crope and Tibbett lapse. But they were all engaged in
Doctor Dillamond's research now, and Boq just put up with Avaric's taunting.

Elphaba remarked one day that she had had a letter from Galinda, away
with her friends on Lake Chorge. "Can you believe it, she proposed I
take a coach and come visit for a weekend," said Elphaba. "She must
really be bored out of her mind with those society girls."

"But she's society herself, how could she be bored?" asked Boq.

"Don't ask me to explain the nuances of that circle," said Elphaba, "but
I suspect that our Miss Galinda isn't quite as society as she makes out."

"Well, Elphie, when are you going?" asked Boq.

"Never," said Elphaba. "This work is too important."

"Let me see the letter."

"I don't have it."

"Bring it to me."

"What are you on about?"

"Maybe she needs you. She always seems to need you."

"She needs me?" Elphaba laughed, coarsely, loudly. "Well I know you're
besotted and I feel somewhat responsible. I'll show you the letter next
week. But I'm not going to go just to give you a vicarious thrill, Boq.
Friend or no friend."

The next week she unfolded the letter.


My dear Miss Elphaba,

I am bade to write to you by my hostesses the Misses Pfannee of Pfann
Hall and Shenshen of the Minkos Clan. We are having a lovely summer at
Lake Chorge. The air is calm and sweet and all is as pleasant as
anything. If you would like to visit us for three or four days before
school begins, we know you have been hard at work all summer and so. A
little change. If you would like to come no need to write if you would
like to visit. Just arrive by coach at Neverdale and come by foot or
hire a hansom cab, it's just a mile or two by the bridge. The house is
dear, covered in roses and ivy, it s called the Caprice-in-the-Pines.
Who wouldn't love it here! I do hope you can come! I do very

specially hope so for reasons I dare not write. I cannot advise you as
to chaperones as .Alina Clutch is already here and so is Ama and Ama
Vimp. You can decide. We hope for long hours of amusing conversation.
Ever your loving friend,


Miss Galinda


of the Arduennas of the Upland


33 Highsummer, midday


at "Caprice-in-the-Pines"

"But you must go!" Boq cried. "Look how she writes to you!"

"She writes like someone who doesn't write very often," Elphaba observed.

"I do hope you can come!' she says. She needs you, Elphie. I insist that
you go!"

"Oh you do? Why don't you go then?" said Elphaba.

"I hardly can go without having been invited."

"Well that's easy enough. I'll write and tell her to invite you."
Elphaba reached for a pencil in her pocket.

"Don't patronize me, Miss Elphaba," said Boq sternly. "This must be
taken seriously."

"You are lovesick and deluded," said Elphaba. "And I don't like your
retreating back to 'Miss Elphaba' to punish me for disagreeing with you.
Besides, I can't go. I have no chaperone."

"I'll be your chaperone."

"Hah! As if Madame Morrible would allow that!"

"Well-how about"-Boq tossed it around-"how about my friend Avaric? He's
the son of a margreave. He's spotless by virtue of his station. Even
Madame Momble would quail before a margreave's son."

"Madame Morrible wouldn't quail before a hurricane. Besides, have you no
concern for me? I don't feel like traveling with this Avaric."

"Elphie," said Boq, "you owe me. I've been helping you out all summer,
and I've had Crope and Tibbett helping too. Now you have to pay me back.
You ask Doctor Dillamond for a few days off, and I'll ask Avaric, who is
bursting to do something. The three of us will go to Lake Chorge. Avaric
and I will rent a room in an inn, and we'll stay a very short time. Just
long enough to make sure that Miss Galinda is all right."

"It's you I'm worried about, not her," said Elphaba, and Boq could see
that he had won.


Madame Momble would not release Elphaba in the care of Avaric. "Your
dear father would never forgive me," she said. "But I am not the
Horrible Morrible you think of me. Oh yes, I know your little pet names
for me, Miss Elphaba. Amusing and juvenile! I am concerned for your
welfare. And with all your hard work all summer, I see that you have
grown, oh, shall we say, verdigrisian? So I shall make a compromise
proposal. Provided that you can convince Master Avaric and Master Boq to
travel with you and my own little Grommetik, whom I will loan in your
care and to care for you, I shall permit your little summer fun."


Elphaba, Boq, and Avaric rode in the coach, and Grommetik was made to
ride on top with the luggage. Elphaba met Boq's eyes from time to time,
grimacing, but she ignored Avaric, to whom she had taken an instant dislike.

When he had finished with the pages of his racing form, Avaric teased
Boq about this trip. "I should have known when I left for the summer
that you were mooning about in the throes of love! You developed this
serious set of chin, it misled me. I thought it was consumption at
least. You should have come out with me that night before I left! A
visit to the Philosophy Club would have been just what the doctor ordered."

Boq was mortified to have such a dive mentioned in the presence of a
female. But Elphaba seemed to take no offense. Perhaps she didn't know
what it was. He tried to steer Avaric away from the subject.

"You don't know Miss Galinda, but you will find her charming," he said.
"I guarantee that." And she will probably find you charming, he thought,
a bit late in the day. But he was even willing to live with that, if it
was the price of helping Galinda out of a tricky situation.

Avaric was regarding Elphaba with contempt. "Miss Elphaba," he said
formally, "does your name imply any elf blood in your background?"

"What a novel idea," said Elphaba. "If there were, I suppose my limbs
would be as brittle as uncooked pasta, and come apart with the slightest
of pressure. Would you care to apply some force?" She proffered a
forearm, green as a spring limeberry. "Do, I beg you, so we can settle
this question for once, for all. We shall conclude that the relative
force you need to break my arm-as opposed to other arms you have
broken-is proportionate to the relative amount of human versus elfin
blood in my veins."

"I certainly will not touch you," said Avaric, managing to say many
things at once.

"The elf in the self regrets," said Elphaba. "Were you to have
dismembered me, I might have been posted back to Shin in small pieces
and been spared the tedium of this forced holiday. And this company."

"Oh, Elphie." Boq sighed. "This isn't a good start, you know."

"I think it's swell," said Avaric, glaring.

"I didn't think friendship required this much," snapped Elphaba to Boq.
"I was better off before."


It was late afternoon by the time they arrived in Neverdale and settled
at the inn, and made their way by foot along the lake to
Caprice-in-the-Pines.

Two older women were in the sunlight by the portico, shelling string
beans and wristwrenchers. The one Boq recognized was Ama Clutch,
Galinda's chaperone; the other must be the minder of Miss Shenshen or
Miss Pfannee. They started at the sight of the procession coming up the
drive, and Ama Clutch leaned forward, the string beans spilling out of
her lap. "Well, I never," she said as they drew near, "it's Miss Elphie
herself. My uncle's whiskers. I never did." She pulled herself to her
feet and clasped Elphaba into her arms. Elphaba stood as stiff as a
plaster figure.

"Give us a minute to be catching our breath, duckies," said Ama Clutch.
"Whatever in the blameless heaven are you doing here, Miss Elphaba? It
don't seem possible."

"I have been invited by Miss Galinda," said Elphaba, "and my fellow
travelers here insisted they wanted to accompany me. So I find myself
compelled to accept."

"I know nothing of this," said Ama Clutch. "Miss Elphaba, let me take
that heavy reticule and find you something clean to put on. You must be
frayed from the voyage. You gentlemen will be staying in the village, of
course. But for now, the girls are in the summerhouse at the edge of the
lake."

The travelers made their way along a path interrupted with stone steps
at the steeper parts. Grommetik took longer at steps and was left
behind, and no one was inclined to stay and lend a hand to a figure with
such a hard skin and clockwork thoughts. Skirting the final growth of
holly flight bushes, they came upon the gazebo.

It was a skeleton house of unstripped logs, six sides open to the
breezes, with a fretwork of arabesquing twigs, and Lake Chorge a mighty
field of blue beyond. The girls were sitting on steps and in wicker
chairs, and Ama Clipp was lost in some small work involving three
needles and many colors of thread.

"Miss Galinda!" broke out Boq, needing his to be the first voice heard.

The girls raised their heads. In evanescent summer frocks, free of hoops
and bustles, they looked like birds about to scatter.

"Holy terror!" said Galinda, her jaw dropping. "What're you doing here!"

"I'm not decent!" shrieked Shenshen, drawing attention to her unshod
feet and pale exposed ankles.

Pfannee bit one corner of her lip and tried to revise her smirk into a
smile of welcome.

"I am not staying for long," said Elphaba. "By the way, girls, this is

Master Avaric, the Margreave Descending from Tenmeadows, Gillikin.

And this is Master Boq from Munchkinland. They're both at Briscoe

Hall. Master Avaric, as if you can't tell by the lovesick expression in
Boq's

face, this is Miss Galinda of the Arduennas, and Miss Shenshen and Miss

Pfannee, who can outline their own pedigrees perfectly well."

"But how enchanting, and how naughty," said Miss Shenshen. "Miss Elphaba
who-never-gives-us-the-time-of-day, you have redeemed yourself for all
time by this pleasant surprise. How do you do, gentlemen."

"But," stammered Galinda, "but why are you here? What's wrong?"

"I am here because I stupidly mentioned your invitation to Master Boq,
who saw it as a sign from the Unnamed God that we should visit.,'

But at this Miss Pfannee could control herself no longer, and fell on
the floor of the gazebo, writhing in laughter. "What," said Shenshen,
"what?"

"But what invitation are you talking about?" asked Galinda.

"I don't need to show you," said Elphaba. For the first time since Boq
had known her, she looked confused. "Surely I don't need to bring it out-"

"I believe I have been set up to be mortified," said Galinda, glaring at
the helpless Pfannee. "I am being humiliated for sport. This is not
funny, Miss Pfannee! I have half a mind to-to kick you!"

Just then Grommetik made it around the edge of the holly flight bush.
The sight of the stupid copper thing teetering on the edge of a stone
step made Shenshen collapse against a column and join Pfannee in
uncontrollable laughter. Even Ama Clipp smiled to herself as she began
to put away her materials.

"But what is going on?" said Elphaba.

"Were you born to plague me?" Galinda said tearfully to her roomie. "Did
I ask for your association?"

"Don't," said Boq. "Don't, Miss Galinda, please don't say another word.
You're upset."

"I-wrote-the-letter," heaved Pfannee between her gales of laughter.
Avaric began to chuckle, and Elphaba's eyes went wide and a little
unfocused.

"You mean you didn't write to invite me to visit here?" said Elphaba to
Galinda.

"Oh, dear no, I did not," said Galinda. In her anger she was beginning
to regain some control, even though, Boq guessed, damage had been done
for good. "My darling Miss Elphaba, I wouldn't have dreamed of exposing
you to such thoughtless cruelties as these girls perpetrate on each
other and on me for sheer amusement. Besides, you have no place In a
setting like this."

"But I've been invited," said Elphaba. "Miss Pfannee, you wrote that
letter instead of Miss Galinda?"

"You ate it up!" chortled Pfannee.

"Well this is your home and I accept your invitation even if it was
written under false pretenses," Elphaba said, her voice evenly
matter-of-fact as she stared into Miss Pfannee's narrowed eyes. "I'll go
up and unpack my bags."

She strode away. Only Grommetik followed. The air went stale with things
unsaid. By and by Pfannee's hysteria grew quieter, and she merely
snorted and wheezed, and then grew still, lying vaporishly and unkempt
on the flagstone floor of the gazebo.

"Well you all needn't pierce me with your sniffy attitudes," she said at
last. "It was a joke."


Elphaba stayed in her room for a day. Galinda came and went with a
dinner. On occasion she would stay for a few minutes. So the boys took
to swimming and rowing on the lake with the girls. Boq tried to fan in
himself an interest in Shenshen or Pfannee, who certainly were
coquettish enough. But they both seemed besotted with Avaric.

At last Boq cornered Galinda on the porch and pleaded with her to talk
with him. She agreed, a measure of her demure demeanor returning, and
they sat a short distance apart on a swing. "I suppose I'm to blame for
not seeing through that ruse," said Boq. "Elphie wasn't inclined to
accept that invitation. I made her."

"What is this Elphie?" said Galinda. "Where has propriety gone this
summer, I ask you?"

"We've become friends."

"Well, I can promise to have gathered that. Why did you make her accept
an invitation? Didn't you know I'd never write such a thing?"

"How should I know that? You're her roomie."

"By executive order of Madame Momble, not by choice! I care to have that
remembered!"

"I didn't know. You seem to get along."

She sniffed, and curled a lip, but it seemed to be a remark to herself.

Boq continued, "If you've been woefully humiliated, why don't you leave?"

"Perhaps I shall," she said. "I'm considering. Elphaba says that to
leave is to admit defeat. Yet if she comes out of her hiding and begins
to trip along with the rest of you-and me-the joke will be unbearable.
They don't like her," she explained.

"Well neither do you, I'd say!" said Boq, in an explosive whisper.

"It's different, I have a right and a reason," she retorted. "I am
forced to put up with her! And all because my stupid Ama stepped on a
rusty nail in the railway station in Frottica and missed the
orientation! My whole academic career up in smoke because of my Ama's
carelessness! When I'm a sorcerer I'll have my revenge on her for that!"

"You could say that Elphaba brought us together," said Boq softly. "I'm
closer to her and so I'm closer to you."

Galinda seemed to give up. She leaned her head back on the velvet
cushions of the swing and said, "Boq, you know despite myself I think
you're a little sweet. You're a little sweet and you're a little
charming and you're a little maddening and you're a little habit-forming."

Boq held his breath.

"But you're little!" she concluded. "You're a Munchkin, for god's sake!"
He kissed her, he kissed her, he kissed her, little by little by little.


The next day Elphaba, Galinda, Boq, and Grommetik-and of course Ama
Clutch-made the six-hour trip back to Shin with fewer than a dozen
remarks among them. Avaric stayed behind to disport himself with Pfannee
and Shenshen. The pestering rain took up at the outskirts of Shin, and
the august facades of Crage Hall and Briscoe Hall were nearly
obliterated with mist by the time they were, at last, home.


6
______
Boq didn't have time or inclination to remark on his romance when he saw
Crope and Tibbett. The Rhino librarian, having paid scant attention to
the boys or their progress all summer, had suddenly cot-toned on to how
little had been achieved, and was all rheumatic buffs and watchful eyes.
The boys chattered little, they brushed and cleaned vellum and rubbed
finfoot oil on leather bindings and polished brass clasps. Only a few
days left of this tedium.

One afternoon Boq let his eye drift down the codex he was handling.
Usually he worked without attention to the subject matter of the
materials, but his eye was drawn to the bright red paint applied in the
illustration. It was a picture-maybe four, five hundred years old?--of a
Kumbric Witch. Some monk's visionary zeal or anxiety about magic had
inspired his brush. The Witch stood on an isthmus connecting two rocky
lands, and on either side of her stretched patches of cerulean blue sea,
with white-lipped waves of astonishing vigor and particularity. The
Witch held in her hands a beast of unrecognizable species, though it was
clearly drowned, or nearly drowned. She cradled it in an arm that,
without attention to actual skeletal flexibility, lovingly encircled the
beast's wet, spiky-furred back. With her other hand she was freeing a
breast from her robe, offering suck to the creature. Her expression was
hard to read, or had the monk's hand smudged, or age and grime bestowed
a sfumato sympathy? She was nearly motherly, with miserable child. Her
look was inward, or sad, or something. But her feet didn't match her
expression, for they were planted on the narrow strand with prehensile
grip, apparent even through the silver-colored shoes, whose
coin-of-the-realm brilliance had first caught Boq's eye. Furthermore,
the feet were turned out at ninety-degree angles to the shins. They
showed in profile as mirror images, heels clicked together and toes
pointing in opposite directions, like a stance in ballet. The gown was a
hazy dawn blue. He guessed by the jeweled tones of the work that the
document hadn't been opened in centuries.

Dramatically, or theologically, this image seemed some sort of a hybrid
of the creation myths of the Animals. Here were the flood waters,
whether they derived from legends of Lurline or the Unnamed God, whether
they were rising or sinking. Was the Kumbric Witch interfering with or
accomplishing the ordained fate of the beasts? Though in a script too
crabbed and archaic for Boq to decipher, perhaps this document supported
the fable of a Kumbric Witch spell that gave the Animals the gifts of
speech, memory, and remorse. Perhaps it merely refuted it, but
glowingly. Any way you looked at it there was the syncretism of myth,
myth's happy appetite to engorge on narrative strains. Maybe this
painting was the suggestion of some alarmed monk that the Animals
received their strengths through yet another sort of baptism, by nursing
at the teat of the Kumbric Witch? Inducted through the milk of the Witch?

Such analysis wasn't his strong point. He had a hard enough time with
the nutrients and common pests of barley. He should do the unthinkable
and deliver this actual scroll to Doctor Dillamond. It would be valuable
to know about.


Or maybe, he thought as he hurried to meet Elphaba, the thing safely
smuggled into the deep pocket of his cape and out of the Three Queens
library, maybe the Witch wasn't feeding the drenched animal, but killing
it? Sacrificing it to stay the floods?

Art was way beyond him.

He had run into Ama Clutch in the bazaar and begged her to deliver a
note to Elphaba. The good woman seemed more sympathetic than usual to
him; was Galinda singing his praises in the privacy of her room?

It was his first time to see the funny green jumping bean since amying
back in Shin. And there she was, on time, arriving at the cafe as
requested, in a gray ghost of a dress, with a knitted over pull fraying
at the sleeves, and a man's umbrella, big and black and lance like when
rolled up. Elphaba sat down with a graceless fromp, and examined the
scroll. She looked at it more closely than she would bring herself to
look at Boq. But she listened to his exegesis, and thought it feeble.
"What prevents this from being the Fairy Queen Lurline?" she asked.

"Well, the accoutrements of glamour are missing. I mean the golden
nimbus of hair. The elegance. The transparent wings. The wand."

"Those silver shoes are pretty gaudy." She munched on a dry biscuit.

"It doesn't look like a portrait of determination or-what do I
mean-genesis. It looks reactive rather than proactive. That figure is at
the very least confused, don't you think?"

"You've been hanging around Crope and Tibbett too long, go back to your
barley," she said, pocketing the thing. "You're getting vague and artsy.
But I'll give it to Doctor Dillamond. I'll tell you, he keeps making
breakthroughs. This business of opposing lenses has opened up a whole
new world of corpuscular architecture. He let me look once, but I
couldn't make out much except for stress and bias, color and pulse. He's
very excited. The problem I see now is getting him to stop-I think he's
on the verge of founding a whole new branch of knowledge, and every
day's findings provoke a hundred new questions. Clinical, theoretical,
hypothetical, empirical, even ontological, I guess. He's been staying up
late at night in the labs. We can see his lights on when we pull the
drapes at night."

"Well, does he need anything more from us? I only have two days left in
that library, and then school starts."

"I can't get him to focus. I think he's just putting together what he's got.

"How about Galinda, then," he said, "if we're done with academic
espionage for the time being? How is she? Does she ask for me?"

Elphaba allowed herself to look at Boq. "No. Galinda really hasn't

said anything about you. To give you hope you don't deserve, I should
add she's hardly said anything to me at all, either. She's in a heavy sulk."

"When will I see her again?"

"Does it mean that much to you?" She smiled wanly. "Boq, does she really
mean that much to you?"

"She is my world," he answered.

"Your world is too small if she is it."

"You can't criticize the sine of a world. I can't help it and I can't
stop it and I can't deny it."

"I should say you look silly," she said, draining the last drops of
lukewarm tea from her cup. "I should say you'll look back on this summer
and cringe. She may be lovely, Boq-no, she is lovely, I agree-but you're
worth a dozen of her." At his shocked expression she threw up her hands.
"Not to me! I don't mean me! Please, that stricken look! Spare me!"

But he wasn't sure if he believed her. She gathered her things in a
hurry and rushed out, knocking the spittoon over in a clatter, slicing
her big umbrella right through someone's newspaper. She didn't look both
ways as she lunged across Railway Square and was nearly mowed down by an
old Ox on a cumbersome tricycle.


7
_____
The next time Boq saw Elphaba and Galinda, all thoughts of romance fled.
It was in the small triangular park outside the gate of Crage Hall. He
had been just happening by, once again, this time with Avaric in tow.
The gates had opened and Ama Vimp had come flouncing out, face white and
nose dripping, and a flurry of girls poured out after her. Among them
were Elphaba and Galinda and Shenshen and Pfannee and Milla. Free of
their walls, the girls huddled in chattering circles, or stood beneath
the trees in shock, or hugged each other, and wailed, and wiped each
other's eyes.

Boq and Avaric hurried up to their friends. Elphaba had her shoulders
high, like a cat's bony yoke, and hers was the only dry face. She stayed
arm's length away from Galinda and the others. Boq longed to take
Galinda in his arms, but she didn't look at him more than once before
diving her face into Milla's thick-fur collar.

"What is it? What has happened?" said Avaric. "Miss Shenshen, Miss Pfannee?"

"It's too horrible," they cried, and Galinda nodded, and her nose ran
messily along the shoulder seam of Milla's blouse. "The police are
there, and a doctor, but it seems to be-"

"What," said Boq, and turned to Elphaba. "Elphie what is it, what?"

"They found out," she said. Her eyes were glazed like old Shizian
porcelain. "Somehow the bastards found out."

The gate creaked open again, and petals of early autumn vine flowers,
blue and purple, came dancing over the college wall. They hung, and
stepped like butterflies, and fell slowly, as three caped policemen and
a doctor in a dark cap emerged carrying a stretcher. A red blanket had
covered the patient, but the wind that tossed the petals caught a corner
of the blanket and pulled it back in a triangular fold. The girls all
shrieked and Ama Vimp ran forward to tuck the blanket down, but in the
sunlight all had looked down and seen the twisted shoulders and
back-thrown head of Doctor Dillamond. His throat was still knotted with
congealed ropes of black blood, where it had been slit as thoroughly as
if he had wandered into an abattoir.

Boq sat down, disgusted and alarmed, hoping he had not seen death, just
a horrible treatable wound. But the police and doctor weren't hurrying,
there was no reason to hurry now. Boq fell back against the wall, and
Avaric, who had never seen the Goat before, held Boq's hands tightly
with one hand and covered his own face with the other.

Before long Galinda and Elphaba sank down beside him, and there was some
weeping, some long weeping, before words could be spoken. At last
Galinda told the story.

"We went to bed last night-and Ama Clutch got up to pull the drapes
closed. As she does. And she looks down and says almost to herself,
'Well there's the lights on, Doctor Goat is at it again.' Then she peers
a little closer, down the yard, and says, 'Well now isn't that funny?'
And I don't pay any attention, I'm just sitting there staring, but
Elphaba says, 'What's funny, Ama Clutch?' And Ama Clutch just pulls the
drape very tightly and says in a funny voice, 'Oh, nothing, my ducks.
I'll just step down to check and make sure everything's all right. As
long as you girls are abed.' She says good night and she leaves, and I
don't know if she

goes down there or what, but we both fall asleep and in the morning she
isn't there with the tea. She always gets the tea! She always does!"

Galinda gave herself to tears, sinking and then raising herself to her
knees and trying to tear her black silk gown with the white epaulets and
the white bobbing. Elphaba, dry-eyed as a desert stone, continued.

"We waited until after breakfast, but then we went to Madame
Morrible's," said Elphaba, "and told her that we didn't know where Ama
Clutch was. And Madame Morrible said that Ama Clutch had had a relapse
during the night and was recovering in the infirmary. She wouldn't let
us in to see her at first, but then when Doctor Dillamond didn't show up
for our first lecture of the semester, we wandered over there and just
pushed our way in. Ama Clutch was in a hospital bed. Her face looked
funny, like the last pancake of the batch, the way it goes all wrong. We
said, 'Ama Clutch, Ama Clutch, what has happened to you?' She didn't say
anything even though her eyes were open. She didn't seem to hear us. We
thought maybe she was asleep or in shock, but her breathing was regular
and her color was good even though her face seemed awry. Then as we were
leaving she turned and she looked at the bedside table.

"Next to a medicine bottle and a cup of lemon water there was a long
rusty nail on a silver tray. She reached a shaky hand out to the nail
and picked it up and held it in her palm, tenderly, and she talked to
it. She said something like, 'Oh well then, I know you didn't mean to
stab my foot last year. You were only trying to get my attention. That's
what misbehavior is all about, just a little extra loving being asked
for. Well, don't you worry Nail, because I'm going to love you just as
much as you need. And after I have a little nap you can tell me how you
came to be holding up the platform of the railway station at Frottica,
for it seems quite a leap from your early years as a common hook for a
CLOSED FOR THE SEASON sign in that dingy hotel you were talking about."

But Boq could not listen to this blather. He could not take in the story
of a live Nail while a dead Goat was being prayed over by hysterical
faculty members. Boq could not listen to the sounds of the prayers for
the repose of the Animal's spirit. He could not watch the departure of
the corpse, when they trundled it away. For it had been clear, with a
glimpse of the Goat's still face, that whatever had given the doctor his
enlivening character had already disappeared.


The Charmed Circle
------------------

1
______
There was no doubt in the minds of anyone who had seen the corpse that
the word, the correct word, was murder. The way the pelt about the neck
had bunched up, caked together like an improperly cleaned worker's
paintbrush; the raw amber hollow in the eye. The official story was that
the doctor had broken a magnifying lens and stumbled against it, cutting
an artery in the process-but nobody believed it.

The only one they could think of to ask, Ama Clutch, merely smiled when
they came to visit, with handfuls of pretty yellowing leaves or a plate
of late Pertha grapes. She devoured the grapes and chatted with the
leaves. It was an ailment no one had ever seen before.

Glinda-for out of some belated apology for her initial rudeness to the
martyred Goat, she now called herself as he had once called her- Glinda
seemed to be stricken dumb before the fact of Ama Clutch. Glinda
wouldn't visit, nor discuss the poor woman's condition, so Elphaba
sneaked in once or twice a day. Boq assumed that Ama Clutch suffered a
passing malady. But after three weeks Madame Morrible began to make
sounds of concern that Elphaba and Glinda-still roomies-had no
chaperone. She suggested the common dormitory for them both. Glinda, who
would no longer go to see Madame Morrible on her own, nodded and
accepted the demotion. It was Elphaba who came up with a solution,
mostly to salvage some shred of Glinda's dignity.

Thus it was that ten days later Boq found himself in the beer garden of
the Cock and Pumpkins, waiting for the midweek coach from the Emerald
City. Madame Morrible didn't allow Elphaba and Glinda to join him, so he
had to decide for himself which two of the seven passengers alighting
were Nanny and Nessarose. The deformities of Elphaba's sister

were well concealed, Elphaba had warned him; Nessarose could even
descend from a carriage with grace, providing the step was secure and
the ground flat.

He met them, said hello. Nanny was a stewed plum of a woman, red and
loose, her old skin looking ready to trail off but for the tucks at the
corners of the mouth, the fleshy rivets by the edges of the eyes. More
than a score of years in the badlands of Quadling Country had made her
lethargic, careless, and saturated with resentment. At her age she ought
to have been allowed to nod off in some warm chimney nook "Good to see a
little Munchkinlander," she murmured to Boq. "It's like the old times."
Then she turned and said into the shadows, "Come, my poppet."

Had he not been warned, Boq wouldn't have taken Nessarose as Elphaba's
sister. She was by no means green, or even blue-white like a genteel
person with bad circulation. Nessarose stepped from the carriage
elegantly, gingerly, strangely, sinking her heel to touch the iron step
at the same time as her toe. Walking as oddly as she did, she drew
attention to her feet, which kept eyes away from the torso, at least at
first.

The feet landed on the ground, driven there with a ferocious intention
to balance, and Nessarose stood before him. She was as Elphaba had said:
gorgeous, pink, slender as a wheat stalk, and armless. The academic
shawl over her shoulders was cunningly folded to soften the shock.

"Hello, good sir," she said, nodding her head very slightly. "The
valises are on top. Can you manage?" Her voice was as smooth and oiled
as Elphaba's was serrated. Nanny propelled Nessarose gently toward the
hansom cab that Boq had engaged. He saw that Nessarose did not move well
without being able to lean backward against a steadying hand.

"So now Nanny has to see the girls through their schooling," said Nanny
to Boq as they rode along. "What with their sainted mother in her
waterlogged grave these long years, and their father off his head. Well,
the family always was bright, and brightness, as you know, decays
brilliantly. Madness is the most shining way. The elderly man, the
Eminent Thropp, he's still alive, and sensible as an old ploughshare.
Survived his daughter and his granddaughter. Elphaba is the Thropp Third
Descending. She'll be the Eminence one day. As a Munchkinlander, you
know about such things."

"Nanny don't gossip, it hurts my soul," Nessarose said.

"Oh my pretty, don't you fret. This Boq is an old friend, or as good
as," said Nanny. "Out in the swamps of Quadling hell, my friend, we've
lost the art of conversation. We croak in chorus with what's left of the
froggie folk."

"I intend to have a headache from shame," said Nessarose, charmingly.

"But I knew Elphie when she was a small thing," said Boq. "I'm from Rush
Margins in Wend Hardings. I must've met you too."

"Primarily I preferred to reside at Coiwen Grounds," said Nanny. "I was
a mortal comfort to the Lady Partra, the Thropp Second Descending. But
occasionally I visited Rush Margins. So I may have met you when you were
young enough to run around without trousers."

"How do you do," said Nessarose.

"The name is Boq," said Boq.

"This is Nessarose," said Nanny, as if it were too painful for the girl
to introduce herself. "She was to come up to Shiz next year, but we have
learned there's a problem with some Gillikinese minder going loopy. So
Nanny is called to step in, and can Nanny leave her sweet? You see why not."

"A sad mystery, we hope for improvement," said Boq.

At Crage Hall, Boq witnessed the reunion of the sisters, which was warm
and gratifying. Madame Morrible had her Grommetik thing wheel out tea
and brisks for the Thropp females, and for Nanny, Boq, and Glinda. Boq,
who had begun to worry about Glinda's retreat into silence, was relieved
to see Glinda cast a hard, appraising eye over the elegant dress of
Nessarose. How could it be, he wondered if Glinda was wondering, that
two sisters should each be disfigured, and should clothe themselves so
unlike? Elphaba wore the humblest of dark frocks; today she was in a
deep purple, almost a black. Nessarose, balanced on a sofa next to
Nanny, who assisted by lifting teacups and crumpling buttery bits of
crumpet, was in green silks, the colors of moss, emerald, and
yellowgreen roses. Green Elphaba, sitting on her other side and lending
her support between the shoulders as she tilted her head back to sip her
tea, looked like a fashion accessory.

"The whole arrangement is highly unusual," Madame Morrible was saying,
"but we don't have unlimited room to accommodate peculiarities,

alas. We'll leave Miss Elphaba and Miss Galinda-Glinda is it now, dear?
How novel-we'll leave those two old pals as they are, and we'll set you
up, Miss Nessarose, with your Nanny in the adjoining room that poor old
Ama Clutch had. It's small but you must think of it as cozy."

"But when Ama Clutch recovers?" asked Glinda.

"Oh, but my dear," said Madame Morrible, "such confidence the young
have! Touching, really." She continued in a more steely voice. "You have
already told me of the long-standing recurrence of this unusual medical
condition. I can only assume this has deteriorated into a permanent
relapse." She munched a biscuit in her slow, fishy way, her cheeks going
in and out like the leather flaps of a bellows. "Of course we can all
hope. Not much more than that, I'm afraid."

"And we can pray," Nessarose said.

"Oh well yes, that," said the Head. "That goes without saying among
people of good breeding, Miss Nessarose."

Boq watched Nessarose and Elphaba both blush. Glinda excused herself and
went away. The usual pang of panic Boq felt at her departure was
softened by knowing he would see her again in life sciences next week,
for, with the new prohibitions on Animal hiring, the colleges had
decided to give assembly lectures to all the students from all the
colleges, at once. Boq would see Glinda at the first coeducation lecture
ever held at Shiz. He couldn't wait.

Though she had changed. She had surely changed.


2
______
Glinda was changed. She knew it herself. She had come to Shiz a vain,
silly thing, and she now found herself in a coven of vipers. Maybe it
was her own fault. She had invented a nonsense disease for Ama Clutch,
and Ama Clutch had come down with it. Was this proof of an inherent
talent of sorcery? Glinda opted to specialize in sorcery this year, and
accepted it as her punishment that Madame Morrible didn't change her
roomie as promised. Glinda no longer cared. Beside Doctor Dillamond's
death, a lot of other matters now seemed insignificant.

But she didn't trust Madame Morrible either. Glinda had told nobody else
that stupid and extravagant lie. So now she would no longer

allow Madame Morrible so much as a finger hold into her life. And Glinda
still didn't have the nerve to confess her unintentional crime to
anyone. While she fretted, Boq, that pesky little flea, kept zizzing
around her looking for attention. She was sorry she had let him kiss
her. What a mistake! Well, all that was behind her now, that trembling
on the edges of social disaster. She had seen the Misses Pfannee et
cetera for what they were-shallow, self-serving snobs-and she would have
no more to do with them.

So Elphaba, no longer a social liability, had all the potential of
becoming an actual friend. If being saddled with this broken doll of a
baby sister didn't interfere too much. It was only with prodding that
Glinda had gotten Elphaba to talk at all about her sister, so that
Glinda might be prepared for Nessarose's arrival and the enlargement of
their social circle.

"She was born at Colwen Grounds, when I was about three," Elphaba had
told her. "My family had gone back to Colwen Grounds for a short stay.
It was one of those times of intense drought. Our father told us later,
after our mother had died, that Nessarose's birth had coincided with a
temporary resurgence of well water in the vicinity. They'd been doing
pagan dances and there was a human sacrifice."

Glinda had stared at Elphaba, who sounded at once unwilling and offended.

"A friend of theirs, a Quadling glassblower. The crowd, incited by some
rabble-rousing pfaithers and a prophetic clock, fell on him and killed
him. A man named Turtle Heart." Elphaba had pressed the palms of her
hands over the high uppers of her stiff black secondhand shoes, and kept
her eyes trained on the floor. "I think that was why my parents became
missionaries to the Quadling people, why they never went back to Colwen
Grounds or Munchkinland."

"But your mother died in childbirth?" said Glinda. "How could she have
been a missionary?"

"She didn't die for five years," said Elphaba, looking at the folds of
her dress, as if the story were an embarrassment. "She died when our
younger brother was born. My father named him Shell, after Turtle Heart,
I think. So Shell and Nessarose and I lived the lives of gypsy children,
slopping around from Quadling settlement to settlement with Nanny and
our father, Frex. He preached, and Nanny taught us and

raised us up and kept house such as we ever had, which wasn't much.
Meanwhile the Wizard's men began draining the badlands to get at the
ruby deposits. It never worked, of course. They managed to chase the
Quadlings out and kill them, round them up in settlement camps for their
own protection and starve them. They despoiled the badlands, raked up
the rubies, and left. My father went barmy over it. There never were
enough rubies to make it worth the effort; we still have no canal system
to run that legendary water from the Vinkus all the way cross-country to
Munchkinland. And the drought, after a few promising reprieves,
continues unabated. The Animals are recalled to the lands of their
ancestors, a ploy to give the farmers a sense of control over something
anyway. It's a systematic marginalizing of populations, Glinda, that's
what the Wizard's all about."

"We were talking about your childhood," said Glinda.

"Well that's it, that's all part of it. You can't divorce your
particulars from politics," Elphaba said. "You want to know what we ate?
How we played?"

"I want to know what Nessarose is like, and Shell," said Glinda.

"Nessarose is a strong-willed semi-invalid," said Elphaba. "She's very
smart, and thinks she is holy. She has inherited my father's taste for
religion. She isn't good at taking care of other people because she has
never learned how to take care of herself. She can't. My father required
me to baby-sit her through most of my childhood. What she will do when
Nanny dies I don't know. I suppose I'll have to take care of her again."

"Oh, what a hideous prospect for a life," said Glinda, before she could
stop herself.

But Elphaba only nodded grimly. "I can't agree with you more," she said.

"As for Shell-" continued Glinda, wondering what fresh pain she might
tread upon.

"Male, and white, and whole," she said. "He's now about ten, I guess.
He'll stay at home and take care of our father. He is a boy, just as
boys are. A little dull, maybe, but he hasn't had the advantages we've had."

"Which are?" prompted Glinda.

"Even for a short time," said Elphaba, "we had a mother. Giddy,
alcoholic, imaginative, uncertain, desperate, brave, stubborn, supportive

woman. We had her. Melena. Shell had no mother but Nanny, who did her best."

"And who was your mother's favorite?" said Glinda.

"Can't tell that," said Elphaba casually, "don't know. Would have been
Shell, probably, since he's a boy. But she died without seeing him so
she didn't even get that small consolation."

"Your father's favorite?"

"Oh, that's easy," said Elphaba, jumping up and finding her books on her
shelf, and getting ready to run out and stop the conversation in its
tracks. "That's Nessarose. You'll see why when you meet her. She'd be
anyone's favorite." She skidded out of the room with no more than a
brief flurry of green fingers, a good-bye.


Glinda wasn't so sure she favored Elphaba's sister. Nessarose seemed so
demanding. Nanny was overly attentive, and Elphaba kept suggesting
adjustments in their living arrangements to make things perfect. Hitch
the drapes to this angle instead of that, to keep the touch of the sun
off Nessarose's pretty skin. Can we have the oil lamp turned up high so
Nessarose can read? Shhh, no chatting after hours; Nessarose has retired
and she is such a light sleeper.

Glinda was a bit awed by Nessarose's freaky beauty. Nessarose dressed
well (if not extravagantly). She deflected attention from herself,
though, by a system of little social tics-the head lowered in a sudden
onslaught of devotion, the eyes batting. It was especially moving-and
irritating-to have to wipe away a trickle of tears brought on by some
epiphany in Nessarose's rich inner spiritual life of which bystanders
could have no inkling. What did one say?

Glinda began to retreat into her studies. Sorcery was being taught by a
louche new instructor named Miss Greyling. She had a gushing respect for
the subject but, it soon became apparent, little natural ability. "At
its most elemental a spell is no more than a recipe for change," she
would flute at them. But when the chicken she tried to turn into a piece
of toast became instead a mess of used coffee grounds cupped in a
lettuce leaf, the students all made a mental note never to accept an
invitation to dine with her.

In the back of the room, creeping with pretend invisibility so that she
might observe, Madame Morrible shook her head and clucked. Once

or twice she could not stop herself from interfering. "No dab hand in
the sorcerer's parlor I," she would protest, "yet surely Miss Greyling
you've omitted the steps to bind and convince? I'm merely asking. Let me
try. You know I take a special pleasure in our training of sorceresses."
Inevitably Miss Greyling sat on what was left of a previous
demonstration, or dropped her purse, collapsing into a heap of shame and
mortification. The girls giggled, and didn't feel that they were
learning much.

Or were they? The benefit of Miss Greyling's clumsiness was that they
were not afraid to try for themselves. And she didn't stint at
enthusiasm if a student managed to accomplish the day's task. The first
time Glinda was able to mask a spool of thread with a spell of
invisibility, even for a few seconds, Miss Greyling clapped her hands
and jumped up and down and broke a heel off her shoe. It was gratifying,
and encouraging.

"Not that I have any objection," said Elphaba one day, when she and
Glinda and Nessarose (and, inevitably, Nanny) sat under a pearlfruit
tree by the Suicide Canal. "But I have to wonder. How does the
university get away with teaching sorcery when its original charter was
so strictly unionist?"

"Well, there isn't anything inherently either religious or nonreligious
about sorcery," said Glinda. "Is there? There isn't anything inherently
pleasure faithist about it either."

"Spells, changings, apparitions? It's all entertainment," said Elphaba.
"It's theatre."

"Well, it can look like theatre, and in the hands of Miss Greyling it
often looks like bad theatre," admitted Glinda. "But the gist of it
isn't concerned with application. It's a practical skill, like-like
reading and writing. It's not that you can, it's what you read or write.
Or, if you'll excuse the play on words, what you spell."

"Father disapproved mightily," Nessarose said, in the dulcet tones of
the unflappably faithful. "Father always said that magic was the sleight
of hand of the devil. He said pleasure faith was no more than an
exercise to distract the masses from the true object of their devotion."

"That's a unionist talking," said Glinda, not taking offense. "A
sensible opinion, if what you're up against is charlatans or street
performers. But sorcery doesn't have to be that. What about the common
witches up in the Glildcus? They say that they magick the cows they've
imported from Munchkinland so they don't go mooing over the edge of some

precipice. Who could ever afford to put a fence on every ledge there?
The magic is a local skill, a contribution to community well-being. It
doesn't have to supplant religion."

"It may not have to," said Nessarose, "but if it tends to, then have we
a duty to be wary of it?"

"Oh, wary, well, I'm wary of the water I drink, it might be poisoned,"
said Glinda. "That doesn't mean I stop drinking water."

"Well, I don't even think it's so big an issue," said Elphaba. "I think
sorcery is trivial. It's concerned with itself mostly, it doesn't lead
outward."

Glinda concentrated very hard and tried to make Elphaba's leftover
sandwich elevate outward over the canal. She only succeeded in exploding
the thing in a small combustion of mayonnaise and shredded carrot and
chopped olives. Nessarose lost her balance laughing, and Nanny had to
prop her up again. Elphaba was covered in bits of food, which she picked
off herself and ate, to the disgust and laughter of everyone else. "It's
all effects, Glinda," she said. "There's nothing ontologically
interesting about magic. Not that I believe in unionism either," she
protested. "I'm an atheist and an aspiritualist."

"You say that to shock and scandalize," said Nessarose primly. "Glinda,
don't listen to a word of her. She always does this, usually to make
Father irate."

"Father's not around," Elphaba reminded her sister.

"I stand in for him and I am offended," said Nessarose. "It's all very
well to turn your nose up at unionism when you have been given a nose by
the Unnamed God. It's quite funny, isn't it, Glinda? Childish." She
looked spitting angry.

"Father's not around," said Elphaba again, in a tone that verged on the
apologetic. "You needn't rush to public defense of his obsessions."

"What you term his obsessions are my articles of faith," she said with a
chilly clarity.

"Well you're not a bad sorceress, for a beginner," said Elphaba, turning
to Glinda. "That was a pretty good mess you made of my lunch."

"Thank you," Glinda said. "I didn't mean to pelt you with it. But I am
getting better, aren't I? And out in public."

"A shocking display," Nessarose said. "That's exactly what Father would
have deplored about sorcery. The allure is all in the surface."

"I agree, it still tastes like olives," Elphaba said, finding a clump of
black olive in her sleeve and holding it out on the tip of her finger to
her sister's mouth. "Taste, Nessa?"

But Nessarose turned her face away and lost herself in silent prayer.


3
______
A few days later Boq managed to catch Elphaba's eye at the break of
their life sciences class, and they met up in an alcove off the main
corridor. "What do you think of this new Doctor Nikidik?" he asked.

"I find it hard to listen," she said, "but that's because I still want
to hear Doctor Dillamond and I can't believe he's gone." On her face was
a look of gray submission to impossible reality.

"Well that's one of the things I'm curious about," he said. "You told me
all about Doctor Dillamond's breakthrough. Do you know if his lab has
been cleared out yet? Maybe there's something there worth finding. You
took the notes for him, couldn't they be the basis of some proposal, or
at least some further study?"

She looked at him with a wiry, strong expression. "Do you think I'm not
way ahead of you?" she asked. "Of course I went tramping through there
the day his body was found. Before anyone could lace up the door with
padlocks and binding spells. Boq, do you take me for a fool?"

"No, I don't take you for a fool, so tell me what you found," he said.

"His findings are well hidden away," she said, "and though there are
colossal holes in my training, I am studying it on my own."

"You mean you're not going to show me?" He was shocked.

"It was never your particular interest," she said. "Besides, until
there's something to prove, what's the point? I don't think Doctor
Dillamond was there yet."

"I am a Munchkinlander," he answered proudly. "Look, Elphie, you've more
or less convinced me what the Wizard is up to. The confining of Animals
back onto farms-to give the dissatisfied Munchkinlander farmers the
impression he's doing something for them-and also to provide forced
labor for the sinking of useless new wells. It's vile. But this affects
Wend Hardings and the towns that sent me here. I have a right to

know what you know. Maybe we can figure it out together, work to make a
change."

"You have too much to lose," she said. "I'm going to take this on myself."

"Take what on?"

She only shook her head. "The less you know the better, and I mean for
your sake. Whoever killed Doctor Dillamond doesn't want his findings
made public. What kind of a friend would I be to you if I put you at
risk too?"

"What kind of friend would I be to you if I didn't insist?" he retorted.

But she wouldn't tell him. When he sat next to her during the rest of
the class and passed her little notes, she ignored them all. Later he
thought that they might have developed a genuine impasse in their
friendship had the odd attack on the newcomer not occurred during that
very session.

Doctor Nikidik had been lecturing on the Life Force. Entwining around
each wrist the two separate tendrils of his long straggly beard, he
spoke in falling tones so that only the first half of each sentence made
it to the back of the room. Hardly a single student was following. When
Doctor Nikidik took a small bottle from his vest pocket and mumbled
something about "Extract of Biological Intention," only the students in
the front row sat up and opened their eyes. For Boq and Elphaba, and
everyone else, the patter ran-"A little sauce for the soup mumble
mumble, as if creation were an unconcluded mumble mumble mumble,
notwithstanding the obligations of all sentient mumble mumble mumble,
and so as a little exercise to make those nodding off in the back of the
mumble mumble mumble, behold a little mundane miracle, courtesy of
mumble mumble mumble."

A frisson of excitement had woken everyone up. The Doctor uncorked the
smoky bottle and made a jerky movement. They could all see a small puff
of dust, like an effervescence of talcum powder, jostle itself in a
swimming plume in the air above the neck of the bottle. The Doctor rowed
his hands a couple of times, to start the air currents eddying upward.
Keeping some rare sort of spatial coherence, the plume began to migrate
upward and over. The ooohs that the students were inclined to

make were all postponed. Doctor Nikidik held a finger out to them to
shush them, and they could tell why. A vast intake of breath would
change the pattern of air currents and divert the floating musk of
powder. But the students began to smile, despite themselves. Above the
stage, amid the standard ceremonial stags' horns and brass trumpets on
braid, hung four oil portraits of the founding fathers of Ozma Towers.
In their ancient garb and serious expressions they looked down on
today's students. If this "biological intention" were to be applied to
one of the founding fathers, what would he say, seeing men and women
students together in the great hail? What would he have to say about
anything? It was a grand moment of anticipation.

But when a door to the side of the stage opened, the mechanics of the
air currents were disturbed. A student looked in, puzzled. A new
student, oddly dressed in suede leggings and a white cotton shirt, with
a pattern of blue diamonds tattooed on the dark skin of his face and
hands. No one had seen him before, or anyone like him. Boq clutched
Elphaba's hand tightly and whispered, "Look! A Winkle!"

And so it seemed, a student from the Vinkus, in strange ceremonial garb,
coming late for class, opening the wrong door, confused and apologetic,
but the door had shut behind him and locked from this side, and there
were no nearby seats available in the front rows. So he dropped where he
was and sat with his back against the door, hoping, no doubt, to look
inconspicuous.

"Drat and damn, the thing's been shabbed off course," said Doctor
Nikidik. "You fool, why don't you come to class on time?"

The shining mist, about the size of a bouquet of flowers, had veered
upward in a draft, and it bypassed the ranks of long-dead dignitaries
waiting an unexpected chance to speak again. Instead it cloaked one of
the racks of antlers, seeming for a few moments to hang itself on the
twisting prongs. "Well, I can scarcely hope to hear a word of wisdom
from them, and I refuse to waste any more of this precious commodity on
classroom demonstrations," said Doctor Nikidik. "The research is still
incomplete and I had thought that mumble mumble mumble. Let you discover
for yourselves if mumble mumble mumble. I should hardly wish to
prejudice your mumble."

The antlers suddenly took a convulsive twist on the wall, and wrenched
themselves out of the oaken paneling. They tumbled and shattered to the
floor, to the shrieking and laughing of the students, especially because
for a minute Doctor Nikidik didn't know what the uproar was about. He
turned around in time to see the antlers right themselves and wait,
quivering, twitching, on the dais, like a fighting cock all nastied up
and ready to go into the ring.

"Oh well, don't look at me," said Doctor Nikidik, collecting his books,
"I didn't ask for anything from you. Blame that one if you must." And he
casually pointed at the Vinkus student, who was cowering so wide-eyed
that the more cynical of the older students began to suspect this was
all a setup.

The antlers stood on their points and skittered, crablike, across the
stage. As the students rose in a common scream, the antlers scrabbled up
the body of the Vinkus boy and pinned him against the locked door. One
wing of the rack caught him by the neck, shackling him in its V yoke,
and the other reared back in the air to stab him in the face.

Doctor Nikidik tried to move fast, and fell to his arthritic knees, but
before he could right himself two boys were up on the stage, out of the
front row, grabbing the antlers and wrestling them to the ground. The
Vinkus boy shrieked in a foreign tongue. "That's Crope and Tibbett!"
said Boq, jouncing Elphaba in the shoulder, "look!" The sorcery students
were all jumping on their seats and trying to lob spells at the
murderous antlers, and Crope and Tibbett found their grips and lost them
and found them again, until at last they succeeded in breaking off one
driving tine, then another, and the pieces, still twitching, fell to the
stage floor without further momentum.

"Oh the poor guy," said Boq, for the Vinkus student had slumped down and
was volubly weeping behind his blue-diamonded hands. "I never saw a
student from the Vinkus before. What an awful welcome to Shiz."


The attack on the Vinkus student provoked gossip and speculation. In
sorcery the next day Glinda asked Miss Greyling to explain something.
"How could Doctor Nikidik's Extract of Biological Intention or whatever
it was, how could it fall under the heading of life sciences when it
behaved like a master spell? What really is the difference between
science and sorcery?"

"Ah," said Miss Greyling, choosing this moment to apply herself to the
care of her hair. "Science, my dears, is the systematic dissection of

nature, to reduce it to working parts that more or less obey universal
laws. Sorcery moves in the opposite direction. It doesn't rend, it
repairs. It is synthesis rather than analysis. It builds anew rather
than revealing the old. In the hands of someone truly skilled"-at this
she jabbed herself with a hair pin and yelped-"it is Art. One might in
fact call it the Superior, or the Finest, Art. It bypasses the Fine Arts
of painting and drama and recitation. It doesn't pose or represent the
world. It becomes. A very noble calling." She began to weep softly with
the force of her own rhetoric. "Can there be a higher desire than to
change the world? Not to draw Utopian blueprints, but really to order
change? To revise the misshapen, reshape the mistaken, to justify the
margins of this ragged error of a universe? Through sorcery to survive?"

At teatime, still awed and amused, Glinda reported Miss Greyling's
little heartfelt speech to the two Thropp sisters. Nessarose said, "Only
the Unnamed God creates, Glinda. If Miss Greyling confuses sorcery with
creation she is in grave danger of corrupting your morals."

"Well," said Glinda, thinking of Ama Clutch on the bed of mental pain
Glinda had once imagined for her, "my morals aren't in the greatest
shape to start out with, Nessa."

"Then if sorcery is to be helpful at all, it must be in reconstructing
your character," said Nessarose firmly. "If you apply yourself in that
direction, I suspect it will be all right in the end. Use your talent at
sorcery, don't be used by it."

Glinda suspected that Nessarose might develop a knack for being
witheringly superior. She winced in advance, even while taking
Nessarose's suggestion to heart.

But Elphaba said, "Glinda, that was a good question. I wish Miss
Greyling had answered it. That little nightmare with the antlers looked
more like magic than science to me, too. The poor Vinkus fellow! Suppose
we ask Doctor Nikidik next week?"

"Who ever would have the courage to do that?" cried Glinda. "Miss
Greyling is at least ridiculous. Doctor Nikidik, with that lovable
bumbling mumbling incoherent way he has-he's so distinguished."


At the life sciences lecture the following week, all eyes were on the
new Vinkus boy. He arrived early and settled himself in the balcony,
about as

far from the lectern as he could get. Boq had the suspicion of nomads
all settled farmers possessed. But Boq had to admit that the expression
in the new boy's eyes was intelligent. Avaric, sliding into the seat
next to Boq, said, "He's a prince, they say. A prince without a purse or
a throne. A pauper noble. In his particular tribe, I mean. He stays at
Ozma Towers and his name is Fiyero. He's a real Winkle, full-blood.
Wonder what he makes of civilization?"

"If that was civilization, last week, he must long for his own barbaric
kind," said Elphaba from the seat on the other side of Boq.

"What's he wearing such silly paint for?" said Avaric. "He only draws
attention to himself. And that skin. I wouldn't want to have skin the
color of shit."

"What a thing to say," said Elphaba. "If you ask me, that's a shitty
opinion."

"Oh please," said Boq. "Let's just shut up."

"I forgot, Elphie, skin is your issue too," said Avaric.

"Leave me out of this," she said. "We just had lunch, and you give me
dyspepsia, Avaric. You and the beans we had at lunch."

"I'm changing my seat," warned Boq, but Doctor Nikidik came in just
then, and the class rose to its feet in routine respect, then settled
back noisily, chummily, chattering.

For a few minutes Elphaba waved her hand to get the Doctor's attention,
but she was sitting too far back and he was burbling on about something
else. She finally leaned over to Boq and said, "At the recess I'll
change my seat and go forward so he can see me." Then the class watched
as Doctor Nikidik finished his inaudible preamble and beckoned a student
to open the same door at the side of the stage that Fiyero had stumbled
through the previous week.

In came a boy from Three Queens rolling a table like a tea tray. On it,
crouched as if to make itself as small as possible, was a lion cub. Even
from the balcony they could sense the terror of the beast. Its tail, a
little whip the color of mashed peanuts, lashed back and forth, and its
shoulders hunched. It had no mane to speak of yet, it was too tiny. But
the tawny head twisted this way and that, as if counting the threats. It
opened its mouth in a little terrified yawp, the infant form of an adult
roar. All over the room hearts melted and people said "Awwwwww."

"Hardly more than a kitten," said Doctor Nikidik. "I had thought to call
it Prrr, but it shivers more often than it purrs, so I call it Brrr
instead."

The creature looked at Doctor Nikidik, and removed itself to the far
edge of the trolley.

"Now the question of the morning is this," said Doctor Nikidik. "Picking
up from the somewhat skewed interests of Doctor Dillamond, who mumble
mumble. Who can tell me if this is an Animal or an animal?"

Elphaba didn't wait to be called on. She stood up in the balcony and
launched her answer out in a clear, strong voice. "Doctor Nikidik, the
question you asked was who can tell if this is an Animal or an animal.
It seems to me the answer is that its mother can. Where is its mother?"

A buzz of amusement. "Caught in the swamp of syntactical semantics, I
see," said the Doctor merrily. He spoke louder, as if having only now
realized that there was a balcony in the hall. "Well done, Miss. Let me
rephrase the question. Will someone here venture a hypothesis as to the
nature of this specimen? And give a reason for such an assessment? We
see before us a beast at a tender age, long before any such beast could
command language if language were part of its makeup. Before
language-assuming language-is this still an Animal?"

"I repeat my question, Doctor," sang out Elphaba. "This is a very young
cub. Where is its mother? Why is it taken from its mother at such an
early age? How even can it feed?"

"Those are impertinent questions to the academic issue at hand," said
the Doctor. "Still, the youthful heart bleeds easily. The mother, shall
we say, died in a sadly timed explosion. Let us presume for the sake of
argument that there was no way of telling whether the mother was a
Lioness or a lioness. After all, as you may have heard, some Animals are
going back to the wild to escape the implications of the current laws."

Elphaba sat down, nonplused. "It doesn't seem right to me," she said to
Boq and Avaric. "For the sake of a science lesson to drag a cub in here
without its mother. Look how terrified it is. It is shivering. And it
can't be cold."

Other students began to venture opinions, but the Doctor shot them down
one by one. The point being, apparently, that without language or
contextual clues, at its infant stages a beast was not clearly Animal or
animal.

"This has a political implication," said Elphaba loudly. "I thought this
was life sciences, not current events."

Boq and Avaric shushed her. She was getting a terrible reputation as a
loudmouth.

The Doctor dragged the episode out long after everyone had digested the
point. But finally he turned and said, "Now do you think that if we
could cauterize that part of the brain that develops language, we could
eliminate the notion of pain and thus its existence? Early tests on this
little torn lion show interesting results." He had picked up a small
hammer with a rubber head, and a syringe. The beast drew itself up and
hissed, and then backed up and fell on the floor, and streaked toward
the door, which had closed and locked from this side as it had the
previous week.

But it wasn't only Elphaba who was on her feet yelling. Half a dozen
students were shouting at the Doctor. "Pain? Eliminate pain? Look at the
thing, it's terrified! It already gets pain! Don't do that, what are
you, crazy?"

The Doctor paused, visibly tightening his grip on the mallet. "I will
not preside over such shocking refusal to learn!" he said, affronted.
"You are leaping to harebrained conclusions based on sentiment and no
observation. Bring the beast here. Bring it back. Young lady, I insist.
I shall be quite cross."

But two girls from Briscoe Hall disobeyed and ran out of the room
carrying the clawing lion club in an apron between them. The room
collapsed in an uproar and Doctor Nikidik stalked off the stage. Elphaba
turned to Boq and said, "Well, I guess I don't get to ask Glinda's good
question about the difference between science and sorcery, do I? We were
definitely headed down a different path today." But her voice was shaking.

"You felt for that beast, didn't you?" Boq was touched. "Elphie, you're
trembling. I don't mean this in an insulting way, but you've nearly gone
white with passion. Come on, let's sneak out and get a tea at the cafe
at Railway Square, for old times' sake."


4
______
Perhaps every accidental cluster of people has a short period of grace,
in between the initial shyness and prejudice on the one hand and
eventual repugnance and betrayal on the other. For Boq it seemed that
his summer obsession with the-then-Galinda made sense if only to usher
in this following, more mature comfort with a circle of friends who had

begun to feel inevitably and permanently connected.

The boys still weren't allowed access to Crage Hall, nor the girls to
the boys' schools, but the city centre area of Shiz became an extension
of the parlors and lecture halls in which they were allowed to mingle.
On a midweek afternoon, on a weekend morning, they would meet by the
canal with a bottle of wine, or in a cafe or student watering hole, or
they would walk about and discuss the fine points of Shiz architecture,
or they would laugh about the excesses of their teachers. Boq and
Avaric, Elphaba and Nessarose (with Nanny), Glinda, and sometimes
Pfannee and Shenshen and Milla, and sometimes Crope and Tibbett. And
Crope brought Fiyero along and introduced him, which frosted Tibbett for
a week or so until the evening that Fiyero said, in his shy formal way,
"Of course-I have been married for some time. We marry young in the
Vinkus." The others were agog at the notion, and felt juvenile.

To be sure, Elphaba and Avaric needled each other mercilessly. Nessarose
tried everyone's patience with her religious rantings. Crope's and
Tibbett's stream of saucy remarks got them dumped in the canal more than
once. But Boq was relieved to find that his crush on Glinda was lifting
somewhat. She sat on the edge of the picnic blanket with a look of
self-reliance, and she diverted conversation away from herself. He had
loved the girl who had loved the glamour in herself, and that girl
seemed to have disappeared. But he was happy to have Glinda as a friend.
Well, in a nutshell: he had loved Galinda and this now was Glinda.
Someone he could no longer quite figure out. Case closed.

It was a charmed circle.


All the girls steered clear of Madame Morrible while they could. One
cold evening, however, Grommetik came hunting for the Thropp sisters.
Nanny huffed and wound the strings of a fresh apron around her waist,
and prodded Nessarose and Elphaba downstairs toward the parlor of the Head.

"I hate that Grommetik thing," said Nessarose. "However does it work,
anyway? Is it clockwork or is it magicked, or some combination of the two?"

"I always imagined a bit of nonsense-that there was a dwarf inside, or
an acrobatic family of elves each working a limb," said Elphaba.

"Whenever Grommetik comes around, my hand gets a strange hunger for a
hammer."

"I can't imagine," Nessarose said. "Hand hunger, I mean."

"Hush, you two, the thing has ears," Nanny said.

Madame Morrible was glancing through the financial papers, making a few
marks in the margin before she deigned to acknowledge her students.
"This won't take but a moment," she said. "I've had a letter from your
dear father, and a package for you. I thought it kindest to deliver the
news myself."

"News?" said Nessarose, blanching.

"He could have written to us as well as to you," said Elphaba.

Madame Morrible ignored her. "He writes to ask of Nessarose's health and
progress, and to tell you both that he is going to undertake a fast and
penance for the return of Ozma Tippetarius."

"Oh, the blessed little girL" said Nanny, warming to one of her favorite
subjects. "When the Wizard took over the Palace all those years ago and
he had the Ozma Regent jailed, we all thought that the sainted Ozma
child would call down disaster upon the Wizard's head. But they say
she's been spirited away and frozen in a cave, like Lurlina. Has
Frexspar got the mettle to melt her-is now her time to return?"

"Please," said Madame Morrible to the sisters, with a sour glance at
Nanny, "I haven't asked you here so that your Nanny could discuss this
contemporary apocrypha, nor to slander our glorious Wizard. It was a
peaceful transition of power. That the Ozma Regent's health failed while
under house arrest was a mere coincidence, nothing more. As to the power
of your father to raise the missing royal child from some
unsubstantiated state of somnolence-well, you've as much as admitted to
me that your father is erratic, if not mad. I can only wish him health
in his endeavors. But I feel it my duty to point out to you girls that
we do not smile on seditious attitudes at Crage Hall. I hope you have
not imported your father's royalist yearnings into the dormitories here."

"We assign ourselves to the Unnamed God, not to the Wizard nor to any
possible remnant of the Royal Family," Nessarose said proudly.

"I have no feeling on the matter at all," muttered Elphaba, "except that
Father loves lost causes."

"Very well," said the Head. "As it should be. Now I have had a package
for you." She handed it to Elphaba, but added, "It is for Nessarose, I
think."

"Open it, Elphie, please," said Nessarose. Nanny leaned forward to look.

Elphaba undid the cord and opened the wooden box. From a pile of ash
shavings she withdrew a shoe, and then another. Were they silver?-or
blue?-or now red?-lacquered with a candy shell brilliance of polish? It
was hard to tell and it didn't matter; the effect was dazzling. Even
Madame Morrible gasped at their splendor. The surface of the shoes
seemed to pulse with hundreds of reflections and refractions. In the
firelight, it was like looking at boiling corpuscles of blood under a
magnifying glass.

"He writes that he bought them for you from some toothless tinker woman
outside Ovvels," said Madame Morrible, "and that he dressed them up with
silver glass beads that he made himself-that someone had taught him to
make?-"

"Turtle Heart," said Nanny darkly.

"-and"- Madame Morrible flipped the letter over, squinting-"he says he
had hoped to give you something special before you left for university,
but in the sudden circumstances of Ama Clutch's sickness . . . blah blah
.. . he was unprepared. So now he sends them to his Nessarose to keep
her beautiful feet warm and dry and beautiful, and he sends them with
his love."

Elphaba drove her fingers through the curlicues of shavings. There was
nothing else in the box, nothing for her.

"Aren't they gorgeous!" Nessarose exclaimed. "Elphie, fix them on my
feet, would you please? Oh, how they sparkle!"

Elphaba went on her knees before her sister. Nessarose sat as regal as
any Ozma, spine erect and face glowing. Elphaba lifted her sister's feet
and slipped off the common house slippers, and replaced them with the
dazzling shoes.

"How thoughtful he is!" said Nessarose.

"Good thing you can stand on your own two feet, you," muttered Nanny to
Elphaba, and put her old hand patronizingly on Elphaba's shoulder
blades, but Elphaba shrugged it away.

"They're just gorgeous," said Elphaba thickly. "Nessarose, they're made
for you. They fit like a dream."

"Oh, Elphie, don't be cross," Nessarose said, looking down at her feet.
"Don't ruin my small happiness with resentment, will you? He knows you
don't need this kind of thing. .

"Of course not," said Elphaba. "Of course I don't."


That evening the friends risked breaking curfew by ordering another
bottle of wine. Nanny tutted and fretted, but as she kept downing her
portion as neatly as anyone else, she was overruled. Fiyero told the
story of how he had been married at the age of seven to a girl from a
neighboring tribe. They all gawped at his apparent lack of shame. He had
only seen his bride once, by accident, when they were both about nine.
"I won't really take up with her until we are twenty, and I'm now only
eighteen," he added. With the relief of imagining he might still be as
virginal as the rest of them, they ordered yet another bottle of wine.

The candles guttered, a small autumnal rain fell. Though the room was
dry, Elphaba drew her cloak about her as if anticipating the walk home.
She had gotten over the sting of being overlooked by Frex. She and
Nessarose began to tell funny stories about their father, as if to prove
to themselves and to everyone else that nothing was amiss. Nessarose,
who wasn't much of a drinker, allowed herself to laugh. "Despite my
appearance, or maybe because of it, he always called me his beautiful
pet," she said, alluding to her lack of arms for the first time in
public. "He would say, 'Come here, my pet, and let me give you a piece
of apple.' And I would walk over as best I could, tilting and tottering
if Nanny or Elphie or Mother wasn't around to support me, and fall into
his lap, and lean up smiling, and he'd drop small pieces of fruit into
my mouth."

"What did he call you, Liphie?" asked Glinda.

"He called her Fabala," interrupted Nessarose.

"At home, at home only," Elphaba said.

"True, you are your father's little Fabala," crooned Nanny, almost to
herself, just outside the circle of smiling faces. "Little Fabala,
little Elphaba, little Elphie."

"He never called me pet," said Elphaba, raising her glass to her sis

ter. "But we all know he told the truth, as Nessarose is the pet in the
family. Hence those splendid shoes."

Nessarose blushed and accepted a toast. "Ah, but while I had his
attention because of my condition, you captured his heart when you
sang," she said.

"Captured his heart? Hah. You mean I performed a necessary function."

But the others said to Elphaba, "Oh, do you sing? Well then! Sing, sing,
you must! Another bottle, another glass, push back the chair, and before
we leave for the night, you must sing! Go on!"

"Only if the others will," said Elphaba, bossily. "Boq? Some
Munchkinlander spinniel? Avaric, a Gilhikinese ballad? Glinda? Nanny, a
lullaby?"

"We know a dirty round, we'll go next if you go," said Crope and Tibbett.

"And I will sing a Vinkus hunting chant," said Fiyero. Everyone chortled
with pleasure and clapped him on the back. So then Elphaba had to stand,
push her chair aside, clear her throat and sound a note into her cupped
hands, and start. As if she were singing for her father, again, after
all this time.

The bar mother slapped her rag at some noisy older men to shush them,
and the dart players dropped their hands to their sides. The room
quieted down. Elphaba made up a little song on the spot, a song of
longing and otherness, of far aways and future days. Strangers closed
their eyes to listen.

Boq did too. Elphaba had an okay voice. He saw the imaginary place she
conjured up, a land where injustice and common cruelty and despotic rule
and the beggaring fist of drought didn't work together to hold everyone
by the neck. No, he wasn't giving her credit: fliphaba had a good voice.
It was controlled and feeling and not histrionic. He listened through to
the end, and the song faded into the hush of a respectful pub. Later, he
thought: The melody faded like a rainbow after a storm, or like winds
calming down at last; and what was left was calm, and possibility, and
relief.

"You next, you promised," cried Elphaba, pointing at Fiyero, but nobody
would sing again, because she had done so well. Nessarose nodded to
Nanny to wipe a tear from the corner of her eye.

"Elphaba says she's not religious but see how feelingly she sings of the
afterlife," said Nessarose, and for once no one was inclined to argue.


5
______
Early one morning, when the world was hoary with rimefrost, Grommetik
arrived with a note for Glinda. Ama Clutch, it seemed, was on her way
out. Glinda and her roommates hurried to the infirmary.

The Head met them there, and led them to a windowless alcove. Ama Clutch
was thrashing about in the bed and talking to the pillowcase. "Don't put
up with me," she was saying wildly, "for what will I ever do for you? I
will abuse your good nature, duckie, and rest my oily locks upon your
fine close weave and I will be picking with my teeth at your lacy
appliqued edge! You are a stupid nuisance to allow it, I say! I don't
care about notions of service! It's all bunk, I tell you, bunk!"

"Ama Clutch, Ama Clutch, it's me," said Glinda. "Listen, dear, it's me!
It's your little Galinda."

Ama Clutch turned her head from side to side. "Your protest is insulting
to your forebears!" she went on, rolling her eyes toward the pillowcase
again. "Those cotton plants on the banks of Restwater didn't allow
themselves to be harvested so you could lie down like a mat and let any
filthy person slobber all over you with night drool! It don't make a
lick of sense!"

"Ama!" Glinda wept. "Please! You're raving!"

"Aha, I see you have nothing to say to that," said Ama Clutch with
satisfaction.

"Come back, Ama, come back, one more time before you go!"

"Oh sweet Lurline, this is dreadful," Nanny said. "Darlings, if I ever
get like this, poison me, will you?"

"She's going, I can see it," Elphaba said. "I saw it enough in Quadling
Country, I know the signs. Glinda, say what you need to say, quickly."

"Madame Morrible, may I have privacy?" Glinda said.

"I will stay by your side and support you. It's my duty to my girls,"
said the Head, settling her hamlike hands determinedly on her waist. But
Elphaba and Nanny got up and elbowed her out of the alcove, down the

hall, and through the door and closed it and locked it. Nanny clucked
all the while, saying, "Now, isn't that nice of you, Madame Head, but no
need. No need at all."

Glinda gripped Ama Clutch's hand. Beads of white sweat were forming like
potato water on the servant's forehead. She struggled to pull her hand
away but her strength was going. "Ama Clutch, you're dying," Glinda
said, "and it's my fault."

"Oh stop," Elphaba said.

"It is," Glinda said fiercely, "it is."

"I'm not arguing that," said Elphaba, "I just mean cut yourself out of
the conversation; this is her death, not your interview with the Unnamed
God. Come on. Do something!"

Glinda grabbed the hands, both hands, even tighter. "I am going to
magick you back," she said between gritted teeth. "Ama Clutch, you do as
I say! I'm still your employer and your better, and you have to obey me!
Now listen to this spell and behave yourself!"

The Ama's teeth gnashed, the eyes rolled, and the chin twisted knobbily,
as if trying to impale some invisible demon in the air above her bed.
Glinda's eyes shut and her jaw worked, and a thread of sound, syllables
incoherent even to herself, came spooling out from her blanched lips.
"Hope you don't explode her like a sandwich," muttered Elphaba.

Glinda ignored this. She hummed and worked, she rocked and panted. Ama
Clutch's eyelids moved so frantically over the closed eyes that it
looked as if her eye sockets were chewing her own eyes. "Magicordium
senssus ovinda clenx," Glinda concluded out loud, "and if that doesn't
do it, I give up; even the smells and bells of a full kit wouldn't help,
I think."

On the straw pallet Ama Clutch fell back. A little blood ran from the
outer edge of each eye. But the wild turning motion of the focus had
shuttered itself down. "Oh my dear," she murmured, "so you're all right
then, or am I dead now?"

"Not yet," said Glinda. "Yes, dear Ama, yes, I'm fine. But sweetheart, I
think you're going."

"Of course I am, the Wind is here, can't you hear it?" Ama Clutch said.
"No matter. Oh there's Elphie, too. Good-bye, my ducks. Stay out of the
Wind until the time is right or you'll be blown in the wrong direction."

Glinda said, "Ama Clutch, I have something to say to you-I have to make
my apology-"

But Elphaba leaned forward, cutting Glinda off from Ama Clutch's line of
sight, and said, "Ama Clutch, before you go, tell us who killed Doctor
Dillamond."

"Surely you know that," Ama Clutch said.

"Make us sure," Elphaba said.

"Well, I saw it, I mean nearly. It had just happened and the knife was
still there"-Ama Clutch worked for breath-"smeared with blood that
hadn't had a chance to dry."

"What did you see? This is important."

"I saw the knife in the air, I saw the Wind come to take Doctor
Dillamond away, I saw the clockwork turn and the Goat's time stop."

"It was Grommetik, wasn't it," Elphaba murmured, trying to get the old
woman to speak the words.

"Well, that's what I'm saying, duckie," said Ama Clutch.

"And did it see you, did it turn on you?" cried Glinda. "Did that make
you ill, Ama Clutch?"

"It was my time to be ill," said Ama Clutch gently, "so I couldn't
complain. And it is my time to die, so leave me be. Just hold my hand,
dear."

"But the fault is mine-" began Glinda.

"You would do me more good if you hushed, sweet Galinda, my duck," said
Ama Clutch gently, and patted Glinda's hand. Then she closed her eyes
and breathed in and out a couple of times. They sat there in a silence
that seemed peculiarly servant-class-Gillikinese, though it was hard,
later on, to explain why. Outside, Madame Morrible moved up and down the
floorboards, pacing. Then they imagined they heard a Wind, or an echo of
a Wind, and Ama Clutch was gone, and the overly subordinate pillowcase
took a small spill of human juice from the edge of her slackened mouth.


6
_____
The funeral was modest, a love-her-and-shove-her affair. Glinda's close
friends attended, filling two pews, and in the second tier of the

chapel a flock of Amas made a professional coterie. The rest of the
chapel was empty.

After the corpse in its winding sheet slid along the oiled chute to the
furnace, the mourners and colleagues retired to Madame Morrible's
private parlor, where she proved to have sanctioned no expense in the
refreshments. The tea was ancient stock, stale as sawdust, the biscuits
were hard, and there was no saffron cream or tamorna marmalade. Glinda
said reprovingly to the Head, "Not even a small bowl of cream?" and
Madame Morrible answered, "My girl, I try to protect my charges from the
worst of the food shortages by judicious shopping and by going without
myself, but I am not wholly responsible for your ignorance. If only
people would obey the Wizard absolutely, there would be abundance. Don't
you realize that conditions verge on famine and cows are dying of
starvation two hundred miles from here? This makes saffron cream very
dear in the market." Glinda began to move away, but Madame Morrible
reached out a raft of cushiony, bulbous, bejeweled fingers. The touch
made Glinda's blood run cold. "I should like to see you, and Miss
Nessarose, and Miss Elphaba," said the Head. "After the guests leave.
Please wait behind."

"We're nabbed for a lecture," whispered Glinda to the Thropp sisters.
"We have to be yelled at."

"Not a word about what Ama Clutch said-or that she came back," said
Elphaba urgently. "Got that, Nessa? Nanny?"

They all nodded. Boq and Avaric, making their good-byes, said that the
group was reconvening at the pub in the Regent's Parade. The girls
agreed to meet them there after their interview with the Head. They
would manage a more honest memorial service for Ama Clutch at the Peach
and Kidneys.

When the small crowd had dispersed, only Grommetik clearing away the
cups and crumbs, Madame Morrible herself banked up the fire-a gesture of
chumminess lost on no one-and sent Grommetik away. "Later, thingy," she
said, "later. Go lubricate yourself in some closet somewhere." Grommetik
wheeled away with, if it was possible, an offended air. Elphaba had to
repress an urge to kick it with the tip of her stout black walking boot.

"You too, Nanny," Madame Morrible said. "A little break from your labors."

"Oh no," Nanny said. "Nanny doesn't leave her Nessa."

"Yes Nanny does. Her sister is perfectly capable of caring for her,"
said the Head. "Aren't you, Miss Elphaba? The very soul of charity."

Elphaba opened her mouth-the word soul always provoked her, Glinda
knew-but closed it again. She made a wincing nod toward the door.
Without a word, Nanny got up to leave, but before the door closed behind
her Nanny said, "It's not my place to complain, but really: no cream? At
a funeral?"

"Help," said Madame Morrible when the door closed, but Glinda wasn't
sure if this was a criticism of servants or a bid for sympathy. The Head
rallied herself by arranging her skirts and the vents and braids of her
smart parlor jacket. In orangey copper sequins she looked like a huge,
upholstered, upended goldfish goddess. How ever did she get to be Head?
Glinda wondered.

"Now that Ama Clutch has gone to ash, we shall, nay, we must move
bravely on," Madame Momble began. "My girls, may I first ask you to
recount the sad story of her last words. It is essential therapy in your
recovery from grief."

The girls didn't look at one another. Glinda, in this situation the
spokesperson, took a breath and said, "Oh, she spewed nonsense to the last."

"No surprise, the dotty old thing," said Madame Morrible, "but what
nonsense?"

"We couldn't make it out," said Glinda.

"I had wondered if she talked about the death of the Goat."

Glinda said, "Oh the Goat? Well I could hardly tell-"

"I suspected that, in her deranged condition, she might return to that
critical moment. The dying often try to make sense, at the last possible
moment, of the puzzles of their lives. Useless effort, of course. No
doubt Ama Clutch was puzzled by what she came across, the Goat's body,
the blood. And Grommetik."

"Oh?" said Glinda faintly. The sisters beside her were careful not to stir.

"That terrible morning I was up early-at my spiritual meditations-and I
noticed the light in Doctor Dillamond's lab. So I sent Grommetik over
with a cheering pot of tea for the old Goat. Grommetik

found the Animal slumped over a broken lens; he'd apparently stumbled
and severed his own jugular vein. Such a sad accident, born of academic
zeal (not to say hubris) and a pitiful lack of common sense. Rest, we
all need rest, the brightest of us need our rest. Grommetik in its
confusion felt for a pulse-none to be found-and I surmise that is just
when Ama Clutch arrived. To see dear Grommetik splashed with the spurts
of a strong circulatory pulse. Ama Clutch arrived out of nowhere and
none of her business, I might add, but let's not malign the dead, shall we?"


Glinda gulped back new tears, and did not mention that Ama Clutch had
mentioned seeing something unusual the evening before, and had wandered
out to check.

"I did always think that the shock of all that blood might have been the
final straw that sent Ama Clutch pitching back into her ailment.
Incidentally, you see why I dismissed Grommetik just now. It's still
very sensitive and suspects, I believe, that Ama Clutch thought it
responsible for the Goat's slaughter."

Glinda said waveringly, "Madame Morrible, you should know that Ama
Clutch had never suffered such a disease as I described to you. I
invented it. But I didn't assign it. I didn't commit it to her, or her
to it."

Elphaba looked at Madame Morrible steadily, keeping her interest modest.
Nessarose's eyelashes fluttered. If Madame Morrible knew Glinda's news
already, her face didn't give her away. She looked as placid as a
tethered rowboat. "Well, this only lends weight to my observations," she
allowed. "There is an imaginative, even a prophetic power in your
pointed little society skull, Miss Glinda."

The Head stood, her skirts rustling, wind through a field of wheat.
"What I say now I say in strictest confidence. I expect my girls to obey
my command. Are we agreed?" She seemed to take their stunned silence as
assent. She looked down on them. That's why she seems so like a fish,
Glinda suddenly thought. She hardly ever blinks.

"By an authority vested in me that is too high to be named, I have been
charged with a crucial task," said the Head. "A task essential to the
internal security of Oz. I have been working to fulfill this task for
some years, and the time is right, and the goods are at my disposal."
She scrutinized them. They were the goods.

"You will not repeat what you hear in this room," she said. "You

will not want to, you will not choose to, and you will not be able to. I
am wrapping each one of you in a binding cocoon as regards this very
sensitive material. No"-she held up a hand at Elphaba's protest-"no you
have no right to object. The deed is already done and you must listen
and be open to what I say."

Glinda tried to examine herself to see if she felt wrapped, or bound, or
spell-chilled. But she only felt frightened and young, which may be
close to the same thing. She glanced at the sisters. Nessarose in her
dazzling shoes was back in her chair, nostrils dilating in fright or
excitement. Elphaba on the other hand looked as stolid and cross as usual.

"You live in a little womb here, a tight little nest, girl with girl. Oh
I know you have your silly boys on the edge, forgettable things. Good
for one thing only and not even reliable at that. But I digress. I must
say that you know little or nothing of the state of the nation today.
You have no sense of the pitch of unrest to which things have mounted.
Setting communities on edge, ethnic groups against one another, bankers
against farmers and factories against shopkeepers. Oz is a seething
volcano threatening to erupt and burn us in its own poisonous pus.

"Our Wizard seems strong enough. Ah, hut is he? Is he really? He has a
grasp of internal politics. He's no slouch at negotiating rates of
exchange with the bloodsuckers of Ev or Jemmicoe or Fliaan. He rules the
Emerald City with an industry and an ability that the decaying
knob-jawed Ozma line never dreamed of. Without him we'd have been swept
away in firestorm, years ago. We can but be grateful. A strong fist does
wonders in a rotten situation. Walk softly but carry a bit stick. I see
I offend. Well, a man is always good for the public face of power, no?

"Yes. But things are not always as they seem. And it has been clear for
some time that the Wizard's bag of tricks would not do forever. There
are bound to be popular uprisings-the stupid, senseless kind, in which
strong dumb people enjoy getting killed for the sake of political
changes that'll be rolled back within the decade. Adds such meaning to
meaningless lives, don't you think? One can't imagine any other reason
for it. At any rate, the Wizard needs some agents. He requires a few
generals. In the long run. Some people with managing skills. Some people
with gumption.

"In a word, women.

"I have called you three girls in here. You are not women yet, but

the moment is closing in on you, faster than you might think. Despite my
opinion as to your behavior, I have had to single you out. There is more
in each one of you than meets the eye. Miss Nessarose, being the newest,
you are the most hidden to me, but once you outgrow that fetching habit
of faith you will display a ferocious authority. Your bodily disorder is
of no significance here. Miss Elphaba, you are an isolate, and even in
my binding spell you sit there stewing in scorn of every word I say.
This is evidence of great internal power and force of will, something I
deeply respect even when marshaled against me. You have shown no sign of
interest in sorcery and I don't claim you have any natural aptitude. But
your splendid lone-wolf spit and spirit can be harnessed, oh yes it can,
and you needn't live a life of unfulfilled rage. And Miss Glinda: You
have surprised yourself with the talents at sorcery you possess. I knew
you would. I had hoped your inclinations might rub off on Miss Elphaba,
but that they haven't is only firmer proof of Miss Elphaba's iron character.

"I see in your eyes you all question my methods. You think, somewhat
wildly: Did Horrible Morrible cause that nail to pierce my Ama Clutch's
foot, making me have to room with Elphaba? Did she cause Ama Clutch to
come downstairs and find the dead Goat, the better to get her out of the
way and require Nanny and thus Nessarose to show up on the scene? How
flattering that you even imagine I have such power."

The Head paused and came near to blushing, which in her was something
like the separating of cream on a flame set too high. "I am a handmaiden
at the service of superiors," she continued, "and my special talent is
to encourage talent. In my own small way I have been called to a
vocation of education, and here I make my little contributions to history.

"Now to be specific. I want you to consider your futures. I would like
to name you, to baptize you as it were, as a trio of Adepts. In the long
run I would like to assign you behind-the-scenes ministerial duties in
different parts of the country. I am empowered to do this, remember, by
those whose boot straps I am not worthy to lick." But she looked smug,
as if she thought herself quite worthy enough, indeed, of attention from
these mysterious forces. "Let us say you will be secret partners of the
highest level of government. You will be anonymous ambassadors of peace,
helping to restrain the unruly element among our less civilized
populations. Nothing is decided yet, of course, and you do have a say in
the matter-a

say to me, and not to each other nor anyone else, as the spell goes-but
I would like you to think about it. I need-eventually-to place an Adept
in Gillikin somewhere. Miss Glinda, with your middle-range social
position and your transparent ambitions, you can slime your way into
ballrooms of margreaves and still be at home in the pigsties. Oh, don't
squirm so, your good blood is only on one side and it's not a terribly
refined strain anyway. The Adept of Gillikin, Miss Glinda? Does it appeal?"

Glinda could only listen. "Miss Elphaba," said Madame Morrible, "full of
the teenage scorn of inherited position, you are nonetheless the Thropp
Third Descending, and your great-grandfather, the Eminent Thropp, is in
his dotage. One day you will inherit what is left of Colwen Grounds,
that pretentious pile in Nest Hardings, and you could manage to be the
Adept of Munchkinland. Your unfortunate skin condition
notwithstanding-indeed, perhaps because of it-you have developed a
feistiness and an iconoclasm that is just faintly appealing when it
doesn't nauseate. It will come in service. Believe me.

"And Miss Nessarose," she went on, "having grown up in Quadling Country,
you will want to return there with Nanny. The social situation in
Quadling Country is such a mess, what with the decimation of the
squelchy froglet population, but it may come back, in small measure, and
there should be someone to oversee the ruby mines. We need someone to
look after things in the South. Once you recover from your religious
mania, it'll be a perfect setting. You don't expect a life of high
society anyway, not without arms. After all, how can one dance without arms?

"As for the Vinkus, we don't imagine we'll need an Adept stationed
there, at least not in your lifetimes. The master plans eradicate any
appreciable population in that godforsaken place."

Here the Head paused and looked around. "Oh, girls. I know you are
young. I know this grieves you. You mustn't think of it as a prison
sentence, though, but an opportunity. You ask yourselves: How will I
grow in a position, albeit a silent one, of prominence and
responsibility? How may my talents flourish? How, my dears, how may I
help my Oz?"

Elphaba's foot twisted, caught the edge of a side table, and a cup and
saucer fell to the floor and smashed.

"You're so predictable," said Madame Morrible, sighing. "That's what
makes my job so easy. Now girls, bound as you are to an oath of silence, I

bid you to go away and think on what I have said. Please don't even try
to discuss it together as it'll just give you a headache and cramps. You
won't be able to manage it. Sometime in the next semester I will call
each of you in here and you can give me your answer. And if you should
choose not to help your country in its hour of need She clasped her
hands in a parody of despair. "Well, you are not the only fish in the
sea, are you?"


The afternoon had turned glowery, with heaps of plum-colored clouds in
the north, beyond the bluestone spires and steeples. The temperature had
dropped twenty degrees since the morning, and the girls kept their
shawls pulled close as they walked to the pub. Nanny, shivering in the
dirty wind, cried, "And what did the old busybody have to say that I
couldn't be allowed to hear?"

But there was nothing they could say. Glinda couldn't even meet the
others' eyes. "We'll lift a glass of champagne for Ama Clutch," said
Elphaba finally, "when we get to the Peach and Kidneys."

"I'd settle for a spoonfui of real cream," said Nanny. "How pinching
that old sow is. No respect for the dead."

But Glinda found that the binding spell was deeper, cut closer than she
had even understood. It wasn't merely that they couldn't talk about it.
Already she had begun-to lose the words about it, to falter in her
thinking, to fail to commit the interview to memory. There was the
proposal. It was a proposal, wasn't it? Of some questionable proposition
in (was it) the civil service? Doing some-some ballroom dancing, which
didn't make sense. Some laughing, a glass of champagne, a handsome man
taking off his cummerbund and pressing his starched cuffs against her
neck, nibbling the teardrop-shaped rubies at her ears . . . Talk softly
but carry a bit stick. Or was it not a proposal but a prophecy? A little
friendly encouragement about the future? And she had been alone, the
others hadn't been listening. Madame Morrible had spoken directly to
her. A lovely testimony to Glinda's . . . potential. The chance to rise.
Walk softly but marry a big prick. A man draping his evening tie on a
bedstead and rolling his diamond studs, nudging them with his nose, down
the declivity of her superior neck . . . It was a dream, Madame Morrible
couldn't have said that! She must be dazed with grief. Poor Ama Clutch.
It had only been a quiet word of condolence from the dear and

self-effacing Head, who found it hard to speak in public. But a man's
tongue between her legs, a spoonful of saffron cream...

Nessarose said, "Catch her, I can't, I'm-" and she sagged against
Nanny's bosom, and Glinda swooned at the same moment. Elphaba thrust out
strong arms and scooped Glinda in mid-collapse. Glinda didn't really
lose consciousness, but the uncomfortable physical nearness of
hawk-faced Elphaba after that undesired act of desire made her want to
shiver with revulsion and to purr at the same time. "Steady on, girl,
not here," said Elphaba, "resist, come on!" Resist was just what Glinda
didn't want to do. But after all, in the shadow of an apple cart, on the
edge of the market where merchants were selling the last fish of the
day, cheap, well, this was hardly the place. "Tough, tough skin," said
Elphaba, appearing to pull words from the back of her throat. "Come on,
Glinda-you've got better brains-come on! I love you too much, snap out
of it, you idiot!"

"Well, really," she said as Elphaba dumped her on a heap of moldy
packing straw. "No need to be so romantic about it!" But she felt
better, as if a wave of illness had just passed.

"You girls, I tell you, the faints, it comes from those tight shoes,"
said Nanny, huffing and loosening Nessarose's glamorous footwear.
"Sensible folk wear leather or wood." She massaged Nessarose's insteps
for a minute, and Nessarose moaned and arched her back, but began in a
few moments to breathe more normally.

"Welcome back to Oz," said Nanny after a while. "What goodies were you
all snacking on, in there with the Head?"

"Come on, they're waiting," said Elphaba. "No sense dawdling. Anyway,
I'm afraid it might rain."

At the Peach and Kidneys, the rest of the gang had commandeered a table
in an alcove several steps above the main floor. They were well into
their cups by that point in the afternoon, and it was clear tears had
been shed. Avaric sat slouched against the brick wall of the student
den, one arm slung around Fiyero and his legs stretched out in
Shenshen's lap. Boq and Crope were arguing about something, anything,
and Tibbett was singing an interminable song to Pfannee, who looked as
if she wanted to drive a dart into the thick of his thigh. "Ahh, the
ladies," slurred Avaric, and made as if to rise.

They sang, and chattered, and ordered sandwiches, and Avaric

plunked down an embarrassment of coins to demand a salver of saffron
cream, in Ama Clutch's memory. Money did wonders and the cream was found
in the larder, which gave Glinda an uneasy feeling, though she didn't
know why. They spooned the airy mounds into one another's mouths,
sculpted with it, mixed it in their champagne, threw it in small gobbets
at one another until the manager came over and told them to get the hell
out. They complied, grumbling. They didn't know it was the last time
they would all be together, or they might have lingered.

A brisk rain had come and gone, but the streets were still noisy with
runoff, and the lamplight glistened and danced in the silvery black
curvetts of water caught among the cobbles. Imagining the possible
brigand in the shadows, or the hungry wanderer lurking nearby, they
stood close together. "I've got an idea," said Avaric, putting one foot
this way and the other that, as if he were as flexible as a man of
straw. "Who's man enough for the Philosophy Club tonight?"

"Oh, no you don't," said Nanny, who hadn't had that much to drink.

"I want to go," whined Nessarose, swaying more than usual.

"You don't even know what it is," said Boq, giggling and hiccuping.

"I don't care, I don't want to leave tonight," Nessarose said. "We only
have one another and I don't want to be left out, and I don't want to go
home!"

"Hush Nessa, hush hush, my pretty," said Elphaba. "That's not the place
for you, or me either. Come on, we're going home. Glinda, come on."

"I have no Ama now," said wide-eyed Glinda, stabbing a finger toward
Elphaba. "I am my own agent. I want to go to the Philosophy Club and see
if it's true."

"The rest can do what they want but we're going home," said Elphaba.

Glinda veered over toward Elphaba, who was homing in on a very
uncertain-looking Boq. "Now Boq, you don't want to go to that disgusting
place, do you?" Elphaba was saying. "Come on, don't let the boys make
you do something you don't want."

"You don't know me," he said, appearing to address the hitching post.
"Elphie, how do you know what I want? Unless I find out? Hmmm?"

"Come with us," said Fiyero to Elphaba. "Please, if we ask you politely?"

"I want to go too," whined Glinda.

"Oh, come, Glinny-dinny," said Boq, "maybe they'll pick us. For old
times' sake, as never was."

The others had awakened a slumbering cab driver and hired his services.
"Boq, Glinda, Elphie, come on," Avaric called from the window. "Where's
your nerve?"

"Boq, think about this," Elphaba urged.

"I always think, I never feel, I never live," he moaned. "Can't I live
once in a while? Just once? Just because I'm short I'm not an infant,
Elphie!"

"Not till now," said Elphaba. Rather smarmy tonight, thought Glinda, and
wrenched herself away to climb into the cab. But Elphaba grabbed her by
the elbow and pivoted her around. "You can't," she whispered. "We're
going to the Emerald City."

"I'm going to the Philosophy Club with my friends-"

"Tonight," hissed Elphaba. "You little idiot, we have no time to waste
on sex!"

Nanny had led Nessarose away already, and the cabbie clucked his reins
and the equipage lumbered away. Glinda stumbled and said, "What did you
think you were just about to say? To say?"

"I already said it and I'm not saying it again," said Elphaba. "My dear,
you and I are going back to Crage Hall tonight only to pack a valise.
Then we're away."

"But the gates'll be locked-"

"It's over the garden wall," said Elphaba, "and we're going to see the
Wizard, come what may and hell to pay."


7
_____
Boq could not believe he was heading to the Philosophy Club at last. He
hoped he wouldn't vomit at a crucial moment. He hoped he would remember
the whole thing tomorrow, or at least some kernel of it, despite the
headache forming vengefully in the hollows at his temples.

The place was discreet, though it was the best known dive in Shiz. It
hid behind a facade of paneled-up windows. A couple of Apes roamed the
street in front, bouncing troublemakers ahead of time. Avaric counted

the party carefully as they fell from the cab. "Shenshen, Crope, me,
Boq, Tibbett, Fiyero, and Pfannee. Seven. Boy how'd we all fit in the
cab, could hardly fit us I'd think." He paid the cabbie and tipped him,
in some obscure homage still to Ama Clutch, and then pushed to the front
of the silent knot of companions. "Come on, we're the right age and the
right drunk," he said, and to the shadowed face at the window, "Seven.
Seven of us, good sir."

The face came forward to the glass and leered at him. "The name is
Yackle, and I'm not a sir nor am I good. What kind are you up to
tonight, Master Fellow?" Speaking through the pane was a crone, with
random teeth and a shiny white-pink wig slipping westwards off her
pearly scalp.

"Kind?" said Avaric, then more bravely, "Any kind."

"I mean the tickets, sweetbread. Strutting and strumming on the sprung
floor, or strumpeting in the old wine cellars?"

"The works," said Avaric.

"You understand house rules? The locked doors, the if-you-pay-you-play
policy?"

"Give us seven, and hurry up about it. We're not fools."

"You never are fools," said the beastly woman. "Well, here you are then,
and come what may. Or who may." She affected a stance of virtue, like a
painting of a unionist virgin saint. "Enter and be saved."

The door swung open, and they went down a flight of uneven brick steps.
At the bottom of the flight was a dwarf in a purple burnoose. He looked
at their tickets, and said, "Where are you soft things from? Out of town?"

"We're all at the university," said Avaric.

"A motley crew. Well, you've seven-of-diamond tickets. See here, the
seven red diamonds printed here, and here." He said, "Have a drink on
the house, watch the girlie show, and dance a little if you want. Every
hour or so I close this street door and open the next." He pointed to a
huge oak door, barred with two monstrous timbers in iron hasps. "You all
go in together or you don't go in at all. That's the rule of the house."

There was a chanteuse singing a send-up of "What Is Oz Without Ozma,"
and teasing herself with a parrot-colored feather boa. A small hand of
elves-real elves!-tootled and rattled out a tinny accompani

ment. Boq had never seen an elf, even though he knew there was a colony
of them not far from Rush Margins. "How weird," he said, inching
forward. They looked like hairless monkeys, naked but for little red
caps, and without any appreciable sex characteristics. They were as
green as sin. Boq turned to say, Look, Elphie, it's like you had a
passel of babies, but he didn't see her and remembered then that she
hadn't come. Nor had Glinda, apparently. Damn.

They danced. The crowd was the most mixed Boq had seen in some time.
There were Animals, humans, dwarfs, elves, and several tiktok things of
incomplete or experimental gender. A squadron of well-built blond boys
circulated with tumblers of rotgut squash wine, which the friends drank
because it was free.

"I don't know if I want to go any more daring than this," said Pfannee
to Boq at one point. "I mean, look, that hussy of a Baboon is almost out
of her dress. Perhaps we should call it a night."

"Do you think?" said Boq. "I mean, I'm game, but if you're feeling
uneasy." Oh hurrah, a way out. He was feeling uneasy himself. "Well
let's get Avaric. He's over there nosing up to Shenshen."

But before they could make their way across the crowded dance floor, the
elves began to let out a banshee screech, and the singer thrust out her
hip and said, "That's the mating call, dollies! Ladies and
gentle-friends! We're doing, and I do mean doing"-she glanced at a note
in her hand-"five black clubs, three black clubs, six red hearts, seven
red diamonds, and-on their honeymoon, isn't it sweet"-she simulated
gagging-"two black spades. Up to the mouth of everlasting bliss,
fraidies and gentlehens."

"Avaric, no," said Boq.

But the crone from the front, who called herself Yackle, came knocking
through the hall-having apparently locked up the front door for the time
being-and she remembered the holders of the designated cards, and
brought them forward with a smile. "All rides, all riders, on the
ready," she said, "here we be, at the shank end of the evening! Lighten
up, lads, it's not a funeral, it's an entertainment!" It had been a
funeral, Boq remembered, trying to invoke the warm, self-effacing spirit
of Ama Clutch. But the time to back out, if such a time existed, had passed.

They were swept through the oak doors and along a slightly sloping

passage whose walls were padded in red and blue velvet. A merry tune was
playing farther on, a dancing ragged melody. A smell of roasting timm
leaves-sweet and softening, you could almost feel them turning up their
purplish edges. Yackle led the way, and the twenty-three revelers
processed, in a confused state of apprehension, elation, and randiness.
The dwarf followed behind. Boq took stock, as best his stumbling mind
could manage. An erect Tiger in hip boots and a cape. A couple of
bankers and their evening consorts, all wearing black masques: as a
protection against blackmail or as an aphrodisiac? A party of merchants
from Ev and Fliaan, in town on business. A couple of women rather long
in the tooth, bedecked in costume jewelry. The honeymoon couple were
Glikkuns. Boq hoped that his crowd wasn't gawping as much as the
Glikkuns were. As he glanced around, only Avaric and Shenshen looked
eager-and Fiyero, possibly because he hadn't yet grasped what this was
all about. The others looked more than a little squeamish.

They entered a small dark theatre-in-the-round, with the space for the
public divided into six stalls. Above, the ceiling was lost in a stony
blackness. Tapers fluttered, and a hollow music issued through fissures
in the wall, increasing an unearthly air of dislocation and otherness.
The stalls circled and faced the central stage, which was enshrouded in
black drapes. The stalls were separated from one another by vertical
strips of latticed wood and slats of mirror. All the parties were being
mixed up, all friends and partners separated. Was there incense in the
air too? It seemed to make Boq's mind split in half, like a husk, and
allow a tenderer, complacent mind to emerge. The softer, more bruisable
aspect, the private intention, the surrendering self.

He felt he was knowing less and less, and it was more and more beautiful
to do so. Why had he been alarmed? He was sitting on a stool, and around
him in the stall sat, almost preternaturally near, a man in a black
masque, an Asp he hadn't noticed before, the Tiger whose breath ran hot
and meaty on his neck, a beautiful schoolgirl, or was that the bride on
her honeymoon? Did the whole stall then tilt forward, like a gently
swung bucket? Anyway, they leaned together toward the central dais, an
altar of veils and sacrifices. Boq loosened his collar and then his
belt, felt the gingery appetite between heart and stomach and the
resulting stiffening apparatus below that. The music of pipes and
whistles was

slowing, or was it that as he watched and waited and breathed so, so
slowly, that the secret area inside himself uncloaked itself, where
nothing mattered?

The dwarf, in a darker hood now, appeared on the stage. He could see
from his vantage point into all the stalls but the revelers in separate
stalls couldn't see one another. The dwarf leaned and reached a hand
here, there, welcoming, beckoning. He encouraged from one stall the
figure of a woman, from another a man (was it Tibbett?), and from the
stall where Boq sat he gestured to the Tiger. Boq felt only faintly sony
not to be chosen himself as he watched the dwarf pass a smoking vial
beneath the nostrils of the three acolytes, and help them to remove
their clothes. There were shackles, and a tray of scented oils and
emollients, and a chest whose contents were still in shadow. The dwarf
bound black blindfolds around the heads of the scholars.

The Tiger was pacing on all fours and growling softly, tossing his head
back and forth in distress or excitement. Tibbett-for it was he, though
nearly out of consciousness-was made to lie on his back on the floor of
the stage. The Tiger strode over him and stood still while the dwarf and
his assistants lifted Tibbett and tied his wrists together, around the
Tiger's chest, and his ankles around the Tiger's pelvis, soTibbett hung
beneath the Tiger's belly, like a trussed pig, his face lost in the
Tiger's chest hair.

The woman was set on a sloping stool, almost like a huge tilting bowl,
and the dwarf tucked something aromatic and runny up in the shadowy
regions. Then the dwarf pointed to Tibbett, who was beginning to twist
and moan into the Tiger's chest. "Let X be the Unknown God," said the
dwarf, poking Tibbett in the ribs. The dwarf then slapped the Tiger on
his flank with a riding crop, and the Tiger strained forward,
positioning his head between the woman's legs. "Let Y be the Dragon of
Time in its cave," said the dwarf, hitting the Tiger again.

As he laced the woman into the half-shell, stroking her nipples with a
glowing salve, he handed her a riding crop with which she could lash at
the Tiger's flanks and face. "And let Z be the Kumbric Witch, and let us
see if she exists tonight The crowd drew nearer, almost participants
themselves, and the musky sense of adventure made them tear at their own
buttons and nibble their own lips, leaning in, in, in.

"Such are the variables in our equation," said the dwarf as the room

darkened even further. "So now, let the true, clandestine study of
knowledge begin."


8
_____
The industrialists of Shiz, from an early stage wary of the growing
power of the Wizard, had elected not to lay down the rail line from Shiz
to the Emerald City as originally planned. Therefore, it was a good
three days' journey from Shiz to the Emerald City-and this was in the
best of weather, for the wealthy who could pay for a constant change of
horses. For Glinda and Elphaba it took more than a week. A bleak,
cold-scoured week, as the winds of autumn ripped the leaves off trees
with a dry screech and a rattle of brittle, protesting limbs.

They rested, like other third-class travelers, in the back rooms above
inn kitchens. In a single lumpy bed, they huddled together for warmth
and encouragement and, Glinda told herself, protection. The others cooed
and shrieked in the stableyard below, the kitchen maids came and went
noisily, at odd hours. Glinda would start as if from a frightful dream,
and nestle in nearer to Elphaba, who seemed at night never to sleep.
Daytimes, the long hours spent in poorly sprung carriages, Elphaba would
nod off against Glinda's shoulder. The land outside grew less succulent
and varied. Trees were crabbed, as if conserving their strength.

And then the sandy scrubland was domesticated by farm life. Overgrazed
fields were dotted with cows, their withers shriveled and papery, their
lowing desperate. An emptiness settled in the farmyards. Once Glinda saw
a farm woman standing on her doorstep, hands sunk deep in apron pockets,
face lined with grief and rage at the useless sky. The woman watched the
carriage pass, and her face showed a yearning to be on it, to be dead,
to be anywhere else other than on this carcass of a property.

The farms gave way to deserted mills and abandoned granges. Then, abrupt
and decisive, the Emerald City rose before them. A city of insistence,
of blanket declaration. It made no sense, clotting up the horizon,
sprouting like a mirage on the characterless plains of central Oz.
Glinda hated it from the moment she saw it. Brash upstart of a city. She

supposed it was her Gillikinese superiority asserting itself. She was
glad of it.

The carriage passed through one of the northern gates, and the scramble
of life aroused itself again, but in an urban key, less restrained and
self-forgiving than that of Shiz. The Emerald City was not amused by
itself, nor did it consider amusement a proper attitude for a city. Its
high self-regard sprang up in public spaces, ceremonial squares, parks
and facades and reflecting pools. "How juvenile, how devoid of irony,"
murmured Glinda. "The pomp, the pretension!"

But Elphaba, who had passed through the Emerald City only once before,
on her way up to Shiz, had no interest in architecture. She had her eyes
glued on the people. "No Animals," she said, "not so you can see,
anyway. Maybe they have all gone underground."

"Underground?" said Glinda, thinking of legendary menaces like the Nome
King and his subterranean colony, or dwarves in their mines in Glikkus,
or the Time Dragon of the old myths, dreaming the world of Oz from his
airless tomb.

"In hiding," said Elphaba. "Look, the poor-I mean are they the poor? The
hungry of Oz? From the failed farms? Or is it just the-the surplus? The
expendable human selvage? Look at them, Glinda, this is a real question.
The Quadlings, having nothing, looked-more-than these-"

Off the boulevard on which they rode branched alleys, where shelves of
tin and cardboard served as roofs for the flood of indigents. Many of
them were children, though some were the diminutive Munchkinlanders, and
some were dwarves, and some were Gillikinese bowed with hunger and
strain. The carriage moved slowly, and faces stood out. A Glikkun youth
with no teeth and no feet or calves, on his stumpy knees in a box,
begging. A Quadling-"Look, a Quadling!" said Elphaba, grabbing Glinda's
wrist. Glinda caught a glimpse of a ruddy brown woman in a shawl,
lifting a small apple to the child in a sling around her neck. Three
Gihikinese girls dressed like women for hire. More children in a pack,
running and squealing like piglets, pressing up against a merchant, to
pick his pockets. Rag merchants with pushcarts. Kiosk keepers whose
goods lay locked beneath safety grilles. And a sort of civil army, if
you could call it that, strolling in foursomes on every second or third
street, brandishing clubs, angular with swords.

They paid the carriage master and walked with their parcels of clothes
toward the Palace. It rose, in stepped-back fashion, a growth of domes
and minarets, high flared buttresses in green marble, blue agate screens
in the recessed windows. Central and most prominent, the broad,
gentle-browed canopies of the pagoda lifted over the Throne Room,
covered with hammered scales of virgin gold, brilliant in the late
afternoon gloom.


Five days later they had made it past the gatekeeper, the receptionists,
and the social secretary. They had sat for hours awaiting a three-minute
interview with the Commander-General of Audiences. Elphaba, a hard,
twisted look on her face, had managed to eject the words "Madame
Morrible" from between her clamping lips. "Tomorrow at eleven," said the
Commander-General. "You will have four minutes between the Ambassador to
Ix and the Matron of the Ladies' Home Guard Social Nourishment Brigade.
Dress code is formal." He handed them a card of regulations that, being
unequipped with courtly dress, they were obliged to ignore.

At three the following afternoon (everything running late), the
Ambassador to Ix left the Throne Room looking agitated and splenetic.
Glinda fluffed the bedraggled feathers in her traveling hat for the
eightieth time, and sighed, "Now you're the one who says what should be
said." Elphaba nodded. To Glinda she looked tired, terrified, but
strong, as if her form were knit with iron and whiskey instead of bones
and blood. The Commander-General of Audiences appeared in the doorway of
the waiting salon.

"You have four minutes," he said. "Do not approach until you are bade to
do so. Do not speak until you are addressed. Do not venture a remark
unless it is to answer a comment or question. You may refer to the
Wizard as 'Your Highness."

"That sounds pretty regal to me. I thought that royalty had been-" But
here Glinda elbowed Elphaba to make her shut up. Really, Elphaba had no
common sense sometimes. They hadn't come so far just to be turned away
because of adolescent radicalism.

The Commander-General took no notice. As they approached a set of tall
double doors, carved with sigils and other occult hieroglyphs, the
Commander-General mentioned, "The Wizard is not in a good humor today
due to the reports of a riot in the Ugabu district in the north of

Winkle Country. I should be prepared for what I find, were I you." Two
stoical doormen opened the doors then, and they passed through.

But the throne did not lie before them. Instead, the antechamber led
left, and through an archway there was another, but on a shifting axis
to the right, and another beyond that, and another. It was like looking
through a reflection of a corridor in mirrors set opposite each other;
it veered inward. Or, thought Glinda, like processing through the
narrowing, deviating chambers of a nautilus. They made a circuit through
eight or ten salons, each slightly smaller than the other, each steeped
in a curdled light that fell from leaded panes above. At last the
antechambers concluded at an archway into a cavernous circular hall,
higher than it was wide, and dark as a chapel. Antique wrought-iron
stands held ziggurats of molded beeswax burning with a multitude of
wicks, and the air was close and slightly floury. The Wizard was absent,
though they saw the throne on a circular dais, inset emeralds gleaming
dully in the candlelight.

"He stepped out to use the toilet," said Elphaba. "Well, we'll wait."

They stood at the archway, not daring to venture farther without invitation.

"If we only have four minutes, I hope this doesn't count," said Glinda.
"I mean, it took us two minutes just to get from there to here."

"At this point-" said Elphaba, and then, "Shhhhh."

Glinda shhhhhhed. She didn't think she heard anything, then she wasn't
sure. There was no change that she could identify in the gloom, but
Elphaba looked like a pointer on alert. Her chin was out, her nose high
and nostrils flared, her dark eyes squinting and widening.

"What," said Glinda, "what?"

"The sound of-"

Glinda heard no sounds, unless it was the hot air lifting from the
flames into the chilly shadows between dark rafters. Or was it the
rustle of silk robes? Was the Wizard approaching? She looked this way
and that. No-there was a rustle, a sort of hiss, as of bacon rashers in
a skillet. The candle flames suddenly all genuflected, obeisant to a
sour wind that beat from the area of the throne.

Then the dais was pelted with thick drops of rain, and a shudder of
homegrown thunder blatted out, more dropped kitchen kettles than
timpani. On the throne was a skeleton of dancing lights; at first Glinda

thought lightning, but then she realized it was luminescent bones
hitched together to suggest something vaguely human, or at least
mammalian. The rib cage flexed open like two fretted hands, and a voice
spoke in the storm, not from the skull but from the dark eye of the
storm where the heart of the lightning creature should be, in the
tabernacle of the rib cage.

"I am Oz, the Great and Terrible," it said, and shook the room with its
related weather. "Who are you?"

Glinda glanced at Elphaba. "Go on, Elphie," she said, nudging her. But
Elphaba looked terrified. Well, of course, the rain. She had that thing
about rainstorms.

"Whooo arrrre youuuu?" bellowed the thing, the Wizard of 0z, whatever.

"Elphie," hissed Glinda. Then, "Oh, you useless thing, all talk and
no-I'm Glinda from Frottica, if you please, Your Highness, descended
matrilineally from the Arduennas of the Upland, and this if you please
is Elphaba, the Thropp Third Descending from Nest Hardings. If you please."

"And if I don't please?" said the Wizard.

"Oh really, how like a child," said Glinda under her breath. "Elphie,
come on, I can't say why we're here!"

But the banal comment of the Wizard's seemed to snap Elphaba out of her
terror. Staying where she was at the edge of the room, gripping Glinda's
hand for support, Elphaba said, "We're students of Madame Morrible at
Crage Hall in Shiz, Your Highness, and we're in possession of some vital
information."

"We are?" said Glinda. "Thanks for telling me."

The small rain seemed to let up a bit, though the room stayed dark as an
eclipse. "Madame Morrible, that paragon of paradoxes," said the Wizard.
"Vital information of her, I wonder?"

"No," said Elphaba. "That is, it is not for us to interpret what we
hear. Gossip is unreliable. But-"

"Gossip is instructive," said the Wizard. "It tells which way the wind
is blowing." The wind then blew in the direction of the girls, and
Elphaba danced back to avoid being spattered. "Go ahead, girls, gossip."

"No," said Elphaba. "We're here on more important business."

"Elphie!" said Glinda. "Do you want to get us thrown in prison?"

"Who are you to decide what is important business?" roared the Wizard.

"I keep my eyes open," said Elphaba. "You didn't call us here to ask for
our gossip; we came with our own agenda."

"How do you know I didn't call you here?"

Well, they didn't know, especially after whatever it was had happened to
them at tea with Madame Morrible. "Scale down, Elphie," whispered
Glinda, "you're making him mad."

"So what?" Elphaba said. "I'm mad." She spoke up again. "I have news of
the murder of a great scientist and a great thinker, Your Highness. I
have news of important discoveries that he was making, and their
suppression. I have every interest in the pursuit of justice and I know
you do too, so that the amazing revelations of Doctor Dillamond will
help you to reverse your recent judgments on the rights of Animals-"

"Doctor Dillamond?" said the Wizard. "Is that all this is about?"

"It is about an entire population of Animals systematically deprived of
their-"

"I know of Doctor Dillamond and I know of his work," said the glowing
bones of the Wizard, snorting. "Derivative, unauthenticated, specious
garbage. What you'd expect of an academic Animal. Predicated on shaky
political notions. Empiricism, quackery, tomfoolery. Cant, rant, and
rhetoric. Were you taken in perhaps by his enthusiasm? His Animal
passion?" The skeleton danced a jig, or perhaps it was a twitch of
disgust. "I know of his interests and his findings. I know little of
what you call his murder and I care less."

"I am not a slave to emotions," Elphaba said sternly. She was pulling
papers from her sleeve, where she had apparently rolled them up around
her arm. "This is not propaganda, Your Highness. This is a well-argued
Theory of Consciousness Inclination, is what he calls it. And you will
be amazed to learn of his discoveries! No right-thinking ruler can
afford to ignore the implica-"

"That you presume me to be right-thinking is touching," said the Wizard.
"You may drop the things where you stand. Unless you prefer to
approach?" The lightning-marionette grinned and stretched out its arms.
"My pet?"

Elphaba dropped the papers. "Good, my Lord," she said in a piercing,
pretentious voice, "I shall take you to be right-thinking, for did I
not, I should be obliged to join an army against you."

"Oh hell, Elphie," said Glinda, then more loudly, "she doesn't speak for
the both of us, Your Highness, I'm an independent person here."

"Please," said Elphaba, at once hard and soft, proud and pleading.
Glinda realized she had never before witnessed Elphaba wanting anything.
"Please, sir. The hardship on the Animals is more than can be borne. It
isn't just the murder of Doctor Dillamond. It's this forced
repatriation, this-this chattelizirig of free Beasts. You must get out
and see the sorrow. There is talk of-there is worry that the next step
will be slaughter and cannibalism. This isn't merely youthful outrage.
Please, sir. This is not untrammeled emotion. What's happening is immoral-"

"I do not listen when anyone uses the word immoral," said the Wizard.
"In the young it is ridiculous, in the old it is sententious and
reactionary and an early warning sign of apoplexy. In the middle-aged,
who love and fear the idea of moral life the most, it is hypocritical."

"If not immoral, then what word can I use to imply wrong?" said Elphaba.

"Try mysterious and then relax a little. The thing is, my green girlie,
it is not for a girl, or a student, or a citizen to assess what is
wrong. This is the job of leaders, and why we exist."

"But then nothing would keep me from assassinating you, did I not know
what wrong was."

"I don't believe in assassination, I don't even know what it means,"
Glinda called. "Yoo boo. I'm going to take my leave now while I'm still
alive."

"Wait," said the Wizard. "I have something to ask you."

They stood still. They stood for minutes. The skeleton fingered its
ribs, played them like the brittle strings of a harp. Music like stones
turning over in a streambed. The skeleton collected its lighted teeth
from its jaws and juggled them. Then it tossed them at the seat of the
throne, where they exploded in candy-colored flashes. The rain was
running down a drain in the floor, Glinda noticed.

"Madame Morrible," said the Wizard. "Agent provocateur and gossip, crony
and companion, teacher and minister. Tell me why she sent you here."

"She didn't," said Elphaba.

"Do you even know the meaning of the word pawn?" shrieked the Wizard.

"Do you know what resistance means?" Elphaba shot back.

But the Wizard only laughed instead of killing them on the spot. "What
does she want of you?"

Glinda spoke up; it was about time. "A decent education. For all her
bombastic ways she's a capable administrator. It can't be easy." Elphaba
was staring at her with a queer, slanted look.

"Has she brought you in-?"

Glinda didn't quite understand. "We're only sophisters. We have only
begun to specialize. I in sorcery, Elphaba in life sciences."

"I see." The Wizard seemed to consider. "And after you graduate next year?"

"I suppose I'll go back to Frottica and get married."

"And you?"

Elphaba didn't answer.

The Wizard turned itself around, broke off its femurs, and pounded the
seat of the throne as if it were a kettledrum. "Really, this is getting
ridiculous, it's all pleasure faith showbiz," said Elphaba. She took a
step or two forward. "Excuse me, Your Highness? Before our time is up?"

The Wizard turned back. Its skull was on fire, a fire not quenched by
the thickening curtain of rain. "I shall say one last thing," the Wizard
ventured, in a voice like a groan, a voice of one in pain. "I shall
quote from the Oziad, the hero tale of ancient Oz."

The girls waited.

The Wizard of Oz recited:

"Then hobbling like a glacier, old Kumbricia

Rubs the naked sky till it rains with blood.

She tears the skin off the sun and eats it hot.

She tucks the sickle moon in her patient purse.

She bears it out, a full-grown changeling stone.

Shard by shard she rearranges the world.

It looks the same, she says, but it is not.

It looks as they expect, but it is not.

"Beware whom you serve," said the Wizard of Oz. Then he was gone, and
the gutters in the floor gurgled, and the candles went instantly out.
There was nothing for them to do but retrace their steps.


At the carriage, Glinda had settled in and made a little nest for them
in the desirable forward-facing seat, guarding Elphaba's place against
three other passengers. "My sister," she lied, "I am saving this seat
for my sister." And how I have changed, she thought, in a year and some.
From despising the colored girl to claiming we are blood! So university
life does change you in ways you cannot guess. I may be the only person
in all the Pertha Hills ever to meet our Wizard. Not on my own steam,
not of my initiative-still, I was there. I did it. And we're not dead.

But we didn't accomplish much.

Then, there was Elphie, at last, barreling along the paving stones with
her elbows jutting and her thin bony torso swathed against the elements,
as usual, in a cape. She came up through the crowd, batting at more
refined passengers to get past, and Glinda shoved open the door. "Thank
heavens, I thought you'd be late," she said. "The driver is eager to
leave. Did you get a lunch for us?"

Elphaba tossed in her lap a couple of oranges, a hunk of unrepentant
cheese, and a loaf of bread that filled the compartment with pungent
staleness. "This'll have to do you till your stop this evening," she said.

"Me, me?" said Glinda. "What do you mean, me? Have you got something
better to eat for yourself?"

"Something worse, I expect," said Elphaba, "but needs to be done. I've
come to say good-bye. I'm not going back with you to Crage Hall. I'll
find a place to study on my own. I'll not be part of-Madame
Morrible's-school-again-"

"No, no," cried Glinda, "I can't let you! Nanny will eat me alive!
Nessarose will die! Madame Morrible will-Elphie, no. No!"

"Tell them I kidnapped you and made you come here, they'll believe that
of me," said Elphaba. She stood on the mounting tread. A fat Glikkun
female dwarf, having caught the gist of the drama, shifted to the more
comfortable seat next to Glinda. "They needn't look for me, Glinda, for
I'm not going to be findable. I'm going down."

"Down where? Back to Quadling Country?"

"That would be telling," Elphaba said. "But I won't lie to you, my dear.
No need to lie. I don't know yet where I'm going. I haven't decided so I
wouldn't have to lie."

"Elphie, get in this cab, don't be a fool," Glinda cried. The driver was
adjusting the reins and yelling at Elphaba to sod off.

"You'll be all right," Elphaba said, "now you're a seasoned traveler.
This is just the return leg of a voyage you already know." She put her
face against Glinda's and kissed her. "Hold out, if you can," she
murmured, and kissed her again. "Hold out, my sweet."

The driver clucked the reins, and pitched a cry to leave. GlInda craned
her head to see Elphaba drift back into the crowds. For all her
singularity of complexion, it was astounding how quickly she became
camouflaged in the ragamuffin variety of street life in the Emerald
City. Or maybe it was foolish tears blurring Glinda's vision. Elphaba
hadn't cried, of course. Her head had turned away quickly as she stepped
down, not to hide her tears but to soften the fact of their absence. But
the sting, to Glinda, was real.


Book 3 - City of Emeralds


On a clammy late summer evening about three years after graduating from
Shiz University, Fiyero stopped at the unionist chapel in Saint Glinda's
Square, to pass some time before meeting a fellow countryman at the opera.

Fiyero hadn't taken to unionism as a student, but he had developed an
eye for frescoes that often adorned the cubbyholes of older chapels. He
was hoping to find a portrait of Saint Glinda. He had not seen Glinda of
the Arduennas of the Uplands since her graduation-she had finished a
year before he did. But he hoped it wouldn't be sacrilegious to light a
charmwax candle in front of Saint Glinda's likeness, and to think of her
namesake.

A service was ending, and the congregation of sensitive adolescent boys
and black-scarved grandmothers drifted slowly out. Fiyero waited until
the lyre player in the nave had finished fingering a tricky diminuet,
then he approached her. "Do forgive me-I'm a visitor from the west."
Well obviously, with his rich ochre skin color and tribal markings. "I
don't see a sexton-a verger-a sacristan, whatever the word is-nor can I
find a pamphlet to tell me-I was looking to find an ikon of Saint Glinda?"

Her face remained grave. "You'll be lucky if it hasn't been papered over
with a poster of Our Glorious Wizard. I'm an itinerant musician, only
through this way once in a while. But I think you might look in the last
aisle; there's an oratory to Saint Glinda, or used to be. Good luck."

Locating it-a tomblike space with an archer's slit instead of a true
window-Fiyero saw, lit by a pinkish sanctuary light, a smoky image of
the Saint, leaning a bit to the right. The portrait was merely
sentimental and not robustly primitive, a disappointment. Water damage
had made great white stains like laundry soap mistakes on the Saint's
holy garments. He couldn't remember her particular legend, nor the
uplifting way that she had gagged on death for the sake of her soul and
for the edifica tion of her admirers.

But then he saw, in the underwatery shadows, that the oratory was
inhabited by a penitent. The head was bowed in prayer, and he was about
to move away when it struck him that he knew who it was.

"Elphaba!" he said.

She turned her head slowly; a lace shawl dropped to her shoulders. Her
hair was looped on her head and skewered with ivory hair

corkscrews. Her eyes batted once or twice slowly, as if she were moving
toward him from a great distance away. He had interrupted her at
prayer-he hadn't remembered her to be religious-maybe she didn't
recognize him.

"Elphaba, it's Fiyero," he said, moving into the doorway, blocking her
exit, and also the light-suddenly he couldn't see her face, and wondered
if he heard correctly when she said, "I beg your pardon, sir?"

"Elphie-I'm Fiyero-we were at Shiz," he said. "My splendid Elphie-how
are you?"

"Sir, I believe you are mistaking me for someone else," she said, in
Elphaba's voice.

"Elphaba, the Thropp Third Descending, if I remember the nomenclature,"
he said, laughing stoutly, "I'm not mistaken at all. I'm Fiyero of the
Arjikis-you know me, you remember me! From Doctor Nikidik's lectures in
the life sciences!"

"You have confused yourself," she said, "sir." That last word sounded a
bit shirty, absolutely Elphaba. "Now you don't mind if I am about my
devotions in peace?" She drew her shawl up above her head, and arranged
it to fall about her temples. The chin in profile could slice a salami,
and even in the low light he knew he wasn't wrong.

"What is it?" he said. "Elphie-well, Miss Elphaba, if you require-don't
shab me off like this. Of course it's you. There's no disguising you.
'What game are you about?"

She didn't answer him in words, but by telling her beads ostentatiously
she was telling him to get lost.

"I'm not going," he said.

"You're interrupting my meditation, sir," she said softly. "Do I have to
call the verger and have you removed?"

"I'll meet you outside," he said. "How long do you need to pray? Half an
hour? An hour? I'll wait."

"In an hour, then, across the street; there's a small public fountain
with some benches. I'll talk with you for five minutes, five minutes
only, and show you that you've made a mistake. Not a serious one, but
increasingly annoying to me."

"Forgive the intrusion. In an hour then-Flphaba." He wasn't going to let
her get away with whatever game she was playing. He with-

drew, however, and went to the musician at the back of the nave. "Is
there another exit to this building besides the main doors?" he asked,
over her spurts of arpeggio. VVhen it was convenient to answer him, she
tucked her head and moved her eyes. "Side door through to the cloister
of the maunts, it's not open to the public, but you can get out to a
servants' delivery alley through there."

He lingered in the shadow of a pillar. In about forty minutes, a cloaked
figure entered the chapel and moved, hobbling with a cane, directly to
the oratory Elphie occupied. He was too far away to hear if words were
exchanged, or anything else. (Perhaps the newcomer was merely another
disciple of Saint GlInda, and wanted solitude to pray.) The figure
didn't linger; it left again as quickly as its stiffjoints would allow.

Fiyero dropped an offering in the poor box-a note, so to avoid the clink
of coin. In a quarter of the city so infested with the urban poor, his
situation of comparative wealth required the penitential gift, though
his motivation was characterized more by guilt than charity. Then he
slipped out through the side door, into an overgrown cloister garden.
Some ancient women in wheeled chairs were chortling at the far end and
didn't notice him. He wondered if Elphaba belonged to this community of
monastic nuns-maunts, they were called. He now remembered that they were
females living in that most paradoxical of institutions: a community of
hermits. Apparently, however, their vows of silence were revoked in the
decay of old age. He decided that Elphaba couldn't have changed that
much in five years. So he let himself out the servants' entrance, into
an alleyway.

Three minutes passed, and Elphaba emerged from the same servants'
entrance, as he had suspected she would. She was intent on avoiding him!
Why, why? The last he had seen of her-he remembered it wdll!-was the day
of Ama Clutch's funeral, and the drunken party at the pub. She had fled
to the Emerald City on some obscure mission, never to return, while he
had been dragged off to the eye-opening joys and terrors of the
Philosophy Club. Rumor held that the great-grandfather, the Eminent
Thropp, had engaged agents to look for her in Shiz, in the Emerald City.
From Elphaba herself there was never a postcard, never a message, never
a clue. Nessarose had been inconsolable at first, and then grew to
resent her sister's putting her through this pain of separation. Nessa
had lost herself deeper in religion, to the point where her friends had
begun to avoid her.

Tomorrow Fiyero would make his apologies for missing the opera and
standing up his business colleague. Tonight he would not lose Elphaba.
As she hurried through the streets, checking over her shoulder more than
once, he thought: If you were trying to lose someone, if you did think
someone was on your trail, this is the time of day to do it-not because
of shadows, but because of light. Elphaba kept turning corners into the
summer sun that, setting, was bowling blinding shafts of light along
side streets, through arcades, over the walls of gardens.

But he had had many years of practice at stalking animals under similar
conditions-nowhere in 0z was the sun as much an adversary as in the
Thousand Year Grasslands. He knew to squint his eyes and follow the
persistence of motion, and forget about identifying by shape. He also
knew how to duck sideways without tipping over or losing his balance,
how to crouch suddenly, how to look for other clues that the prey had
begun to move again-the startled birds, the change in sound, the
disrupted wind. She could not lose him, and she could not know he was on
her trail.

So he wound halfway across the city, from the elegant city centre to the
low-rent warehouse district, in whose shadowy doorways the destitute
made their malodorous homes. Within spitting distance of an army
barracks, Elphaba stopped before a boarded-up corn exchange, ferreted a
key from some inner pocket, and opened the door.

He caited from a short distance, in an ordinary voice-"Fabala!" Even in
the act of turning she caught herself and tried to rearrange her
expression. But it was too late. She had shown that she recognized him,
and she realized it. His foot was blocking the way before she could slam
the heavy door shut.

"Are you in trouble?" he asked.

"Leave me alone," she said, "please. Please."

"You're in trouble, let me in."

"You're trouble. Stay out." Pure Elphaba. His last doubts fled. He
cracked the door open with his shoulder.

"You're making me into a monster," he said, grunting with the effort-she
was strong. "I'm not going to rob you or rape you. I just- won't-be
ignored like that. Why?"

She gave up then, and he fell stupidly against the unplastered brick
wall of the stairwell, like a pratfalling twit in a vaudeville hour. "I
remem

bered you as full of delicacy and grace," she said. "Did you catch
something by accident, or did you study awkwardness?"

"Come on," he said, "you force someone to behave like a clumping boor,
you give them no choice. Don't be so surprised. I can still manage
grace. I can do delicacy. Half a minute."

"Shiz got to you," she said, eyebrows up, but mockingly; she wasn't
really surprised. "Listen to those graduate school affectations. Where's
the native boy reeking that appealing naivete like a well-chosen musk?"

"You're looking well too," he said, a bit hurt. "Do you live in this
stairwell or are we going someplace even a little bit homey?"

She cursed and mounted the stairs; they were covered with mouse turds
and scraps of packing straw. A soupy evening light seeped in the grimy
gray glass windows. At a bend in the stairs a white cat was waiting,
haughty and disaffected like all its kin. "Malky, Malky, miaow miaow,"
said Elphaba as she passed it, and it deigned to follow her up to the
pointy arched doorway at the top of the stairs.

"Your familiar?" said Fiyero.

"Oh, that's rich," said Elphaba. "Well, I'd as soon be thought a witch
as anything else. Why not. Here Malky, some milk."

The room was large and seemed only casually arranged for dwelling.
Originally a storeroom, it had barricaded double doors that could be
swung outward, to receive or dispense sacks of grain hauled up by a
winch from the street. The only natural light fell in through a couple
of cracked panes of glass in a skylight open four or five inches. Pigeon
feathers and white-and-bloody flux on the floor below. Eight or ten
crates in a circle, as if for sitting. A bedroll. Clothes folded on a
trunk. Some odd feathers, bits of bones, strung teeth, and a wizened
dodo claw, brown and twisted like beefjerky: These were hung on nails
pounded into the wall, and arranged for art or for a spell. A sallowwood
table-a nice piece of furniture, that!-whose three arching legs tapered
down into elegantly carved doe's hooves. A few tin plates, red with
white speckles, some food wrapped in cloth and cord. A pile of books at
the bedside. A cat toy tied to a string. Most effectively, and
gruesomely, the skull of an elephant hung on a rafter, and a bouquet of
dried creamy pink roses emerged from the central hole in the hull of its
cranium-like the exploding brains of a dying animal, he couldn't help
thinking, remembering Elphaba's youthful

concerns. Or maybe an homage to the putative magical talents of elephants?

Below it hung a crude glass oval, scratched and chipped, used as a
looking glass, perhaps, though its reflective qualities appeared unreliable.

"So this is home," said Fiyero as Elphaba brought out some food for the
cat and ignored Fiyero some more.

"Ask me no questions and I'll spell you no lies," she said.

"May I sit down?"

"That's a question"-but she was grinning-"oh, well then, sit for ten
minutes and tell me about yourself. How did you of all people turn into
a sophisticate?"

"Appearances are deceiving," he said. "I can afford the garb and affect
the language, but I'm still an Arjiki tribal boy underneath."

"What is your life like?"

"Is there something to drink? Not alcohol-I'm just thirsty."

"I don't have running water. I don't use it. There's some questionable
milk-at least Malky will still drink it-or perhaps there's a bottle of
ale upthere on the shelf-help yourself."

She took a little ale in a pipkin, left the rest for him.

He told her the barest outline of things. His wife, Sarima, the
childhood bride grown up and grown fecund-their three children. The old
Office of Public Works waterworks headquarters at Kiamo Ko, which by
ambush and occupation his father had converted to a chieftain's seat and
a tribal stronghold back in the time of the Ozma Regent. The dizzying
schizoid life of moving every year from the Thousand Year Grasslands in
the spring and summer, where the clan hunted and feasted, to a more
settled autumn and winter at Kiamo Ko. "An Arjiki prince has business
interests here in the Emerald City?" said Elphaba. "If it were banking
you'd be in Shin. The business of this city is military, my old friend.
What are you up to?"

"You've heard enough from me," he said. "I can play coy and deceptive
too, even if it's all pretend and no dark secrets to speak of." He
guessed the quiet business of trade agreements would not Impress his old
friend; he was embarrassed his affairs weren't more audacious or
thrilling. "But I've gone on. What of you, Elphie?"

She wouldn't say anything for a few minutes. She unrolled some dried
sausage and some graying bread, and found a couple of oranges and

a lemon, and put them unceremoniously on the table. In the mothy
atmosphere she looked more like a shadow than a person; her green skin
seemed oddly soft, like spring leaves at their tenderest, and beaten,
like copper. He had an unprecedented urge to grab her wrist and make her
stop moving about-if not to make her talk, at least to keep her still,
so he could look at her.

"Eat this stuff," she said at last. "I'm not hungry. You eat it, go on."

"Tell me something," he begged. "You left us at Shiz-you disappeared
like the morning fog. Why, where to, and what then?"

"How poetic you are," she said. "I've a notion that poetry is the
highest form of self-deception."

"Don't change the subject."

But she was agitated. Her fingers twitched; she called for the cat, and
then irritated it and sent it flying off her lap. Finally she said, "Oh
well, this much then. But you're never to come here again. I don't want
to have to find a new place, this is too good for me. Do you promise?"

"I will agree to consider promising, that's all. How can I promise any
more than that? I don't know a thing yet."

She said, hurriedly, "Well, I was fed up with Shin. The death of

Doctor Dillamond vexed me, and everybody grieved and nobody cared.

Not really. It wasn't the right place for me anyway, all those silly girls.

Although I liked Glinda well enough. How is she anyway?"

"I'm not in touch. I keep expecting to run into her at some Palace
reception or other. I hear through the grapevine that she married a
Paltos baronet."

Elphaba looked annoyed and her back stiffened. "Only a baronet? Not a
baron or a viscount at least? What a disappointment. Her early promise
was never to pan out, then." Meant as a joke, her remark was stiff and
unfunny. "Is she a mother?"

"I don't know. I'm asking the questions now, remember?"

"Yes, but Palace receptions?" she said. "Are you in cahoots with Our
Glorious Wizard?"

"I hear he's mostly gone reclusive. I've never met him," Fiyero said.

"He shows up at the opera and listens behind a portable screen. At his

own formal dinners he dines apart, in an adjoining chamber behind a

carved marble grill. I've seen a profile of a stately man walking along a

promenade. If that's even the Wizard, that's all I've met of him. But
you, you:you. Why did you cut us all off?"

"I loved you too much to keep in touch."

"What does that mean?"

"Don't ask me," she said, thrashing a bit, her arms like oars rowing in
the blue summer evening lightlessness.

"Yes, I am asking. Have you lived here ever since? For five years? Do
you study? Do you work?" He rubbed his bare forearms as he tried to
guess about her: What would she be up to? "Are you associated with the
Animal Relief League, or one of those defiant little humanitarian
organizations?"

"I never use the words humanist or humanitarian, as it seems to me that
to be human is to be capable of the most heinous crimes in nature."

"You're evading again."

"That's my job," she said. "There, that's a clue for you, dear Fiyero."

"Amplify."

"I went underground," she said softly, "and I am still underground.
You're the first one to crack my anonymity since I said good-bye to
Glinda five years ago. So you now know why I can't say any more, or why
you can't see me again. For all I know you will turn me in to the Gale
Force."

"Hah! Those martinets! You think very little of me if you think I-"

"How do I know, how could I know?" She twisted her fingers together, a
puzzle of green sticks. "They march in those boots all over the poor and
the weak. They terrify households at three in the morning and drag away
dissenters-and break up printing presses with their axes-and hold mock
trials for treason at midnight and executions at dawn. They rake over
every quarter of this beautiful, false city. They harvest a crop of
victims on a monthly basis. It's government by terror. They could be
massing on the street right now. Never having yet followed me, they may
have followed you."

"You're not as hard to follow as you think," he told her. "You're good
but not that good. I could teach you a few things."

"I bet you could," she said, "but you won't, for we won't meet again.
It's too dangerous, for you as well as for me. That's what I mean when I
say I loved you all too much to keep in touch. Do you think the

Gale Force is above torturing friends and family to get at sensitive
information? You've got a wife and children, and I'm merely an old
college friend you ran into once. Clever you to have followed me. Never
again, do you hear? I will move ff1 find you're trailing me. I can pick
up right now, and be away in thirty seconds. It's my training."

"Don't do this to me," he said.

"We're old friends," she said, "but we're not even especially good
friends. Don't turn this into a sentimental rendezvous. It's nice to see
you but I don't ever want to see you again. Take care of yourself and
beware high connections with bastards, because when the revolution comes
there won't be mercy for toadying ass-lickers."

"At what-twenty three years old?-you're playing the Lady Rebel?" he
said. "It's not becoming."

"It's unbecoming," she agreed. "A perfect word for my new life.
Unbecoming. I who have always been unbecoming am becoming un. Though I
point out you are the same age as I, and prancing about as a prince. But
have you eaten enough? We have to say good-bye now."

"We don't," he said, firmly. He wanted to take her hands in his- he
didn't remember that he'd ever touched her before. He corrected
himself-he knew he never had.

It was almost as if she could read his mind. "You know who you are," she
said, "but you don't know who I am. You can't-I mean you can't and you
can't-it's not allowed, for one, and you're not capable for the other.
Godspeed, if they use that phrase in the Vinkus-if it's not a curse.
Godspeed, Fiyero."

She handed him his opera cape, and held out her hand to shake his. He
grabbed her hand, and looked up into her face, which just for a second
had fallen open. What he saw there made him chill and hot flash, in
dizzying simultaneity, with the shape and scale of its need.


"What do you hear of Boq?" she asked, the next time they met.

"You just won't answer me anything about yourself, will you?" he said.
He was lounging with his feet up on her table. "Why did you finally
agree to let me come back if you keep yourself locked up like a prisoner?"

"I rather liked Boq, that's all." She grinned. "I let you come back so I
could pump you for news of him, and of the others."

He told her what he knew. Boq had married Miss Milla, of all surprising
turns. She had been dragged out to Nest Hardings, and she hated it. She
kept trying suicide. "His letters sent at Lurlinemas every year are
hysterical; they annotate her failed attempts at killing herself like a
sort of annual family report."

"It makes me wonder, in the same circumstances, what my mother must have
gone through," said Elphaba. "The privileged childhood in the big home
of the ascendancy, then the rude shock of a hard life out there in
nowhere-land. In Mama's case, from Colwen Grounds to Rush Margins, then
the Quadling lowlands. It's actually a penance of the most severe sort."

"Like mother like daughter," said Fiyero. "Haven't you left a certain
amount of privilege yourself, to live here like a snail? Hidden and
private?"

"I remember the first time I saw you," she said, shaking drops of
vinegar over the roots and vegetables she was preparing for a supper.
"It was in that lecture hall of what's-his-name-Doctor .

"Doctor Nikidik," said Fiyero. He blushed.

"You had those beautiful markings on your face-I'd never seen such
before. Did you plan that entrance, to win your way into our hearts?"

"On my honor, could I have done anything else, I would have. I was both
mortified and terrified. Do you know, I thought those enchanted antlers
were going to kill me? And it was prancing Crope and ffibberty Tibbett
who saved me."

"Crope and Tibbett! Tibbett and Crope! I'd forgotten all about them. How
are they?"

"Tibbett was never the same after that escapade at the Philosophy Club.
Crope, I think, entered an arts auction house, and still ffits around
with the theatrical set. I see him from time to time at occasions. We
don't speak."

"My, you're disapproving!" She laughed. "Of course being as prurient as
the next creature I always wondered what the Philosophy Club had turned
out to be like. You know, in another life I'd like to see them all
again. And Glinda, dear Glinda. And even nasty Avaric. What of him?"

"Avaric I do speak to. He's most of the year installed in the
Margreavate, but he has a house in Shin. And when in the Emerald City we
stay at the same club."

"Is he still a smug boor?"

"My,you're disapproving now."

"I suppose I am." They ate their dinner. Fiyero waited for her to ask
more about his family. But it was their respective families they were
keeping from each other, apparently: his Vinkus wife and children, her
circle of agitators and insurrectionists.

The next time he came, he thought, he must wear a shirt open at the
neck, so she could see that the pattern of blue diamonds on his face
continued unbroken down his chest. . . Since she seemed to like that.


"Surely you don't spend the entire autumn season in the Emerald City?"
she asked one evening when the cold was drawing in.

"I've send word to Sarima that business is keeping me here indefinitely.
She doesn't care. How could she care? Plucked out of a filthy
caravansary and married as a small child to an ArjikI prince? Her family
wasn't stupid. She's got food, servants, and the solid stone walls of
Kiamo Ko for defense against the other tribes. She's going a little fat
after her third child. She doesn't really notice whether I'm home or
not-well, she has five sisters, and they all moved in. I married a harem."

"No!" Elphaba sounded intrigued and a little embarrassed at the idea.

"You're right, no, not really. Sarima has proposed once or twice that
her younger sisters could and would happily occupy my energies at
nighttime. Once you pass over the Great Kells, the taboo against such an
exercise isn't as strong as it seems to be in the rest of Oz, so stop
looking so shocked."

"I can't help it. Did you do it?"

"Did I 'do it'?" He was teasing her.

"Did you sleep with your sisters-in-law?"

"No," he said. "Not out of lofty moral standards, or a lack of interest,
either. It's just that Sarima is a shrewd wife, and everything in
marriage is a campaign. I would have been in her thrall even more than I
am."

"Such a bad thing?"

"You're not married, you don't know: Yes, a bad thing."

"I am married," she said, "just not to a man."

He raised his eyebrows. She put her hands to her face. He'd never seen

her look like that-her words had shocked herself. She had to turn her
head away for an instant, clear her throat, blow her nose. "Oh damn,
tears, they burn like fire," she cried, suddenly in a fury, and ran for
an old blanket to dab her eyes before the salty wetness could run down
her cheeks.

She stood bent over like an old woman, one arm on the counter, the
blanket falling from her face to the floor. "Elphie, Elphie," he said,
horrified, and lurched after her, and put his arms around her. The
blanket hung between them, chin to anides, but seemed about to burst
into flame itself, or roses, or a fountain of champagne and incense. Odd
how the richest images bloomed in the mind when the body itself was most
alert..

"No," she cried, "no, no, I'm not a harem, I'm not a woman, I'm not a
person, no." But her arms wheeled of their own accord, like windmill
sails, like those magicked antlers, not to kill him, but to pin him with
love, to mount him against the wall.

Malky, with a rare display of discretion, climbed to the windowsill and
looked away from them.


They conducted their love affair in the room above the abandoned corn
exchange as the autumn weather came lop-leggedly in from the east: now a
warm day, now a sunny one, now four days of cold winds and thin rain.

There were long days in a row when they couldn't meet. "I have business,
I have work, trust me or I shall disappear on you," she said. "I shall
write to Glinda and ask her to share the spell on how to go up in a puff
of smoke. I am teasing, but I mean it, Fiyero."

Fijero + Fae he wrote, in the flour that spilled when she rolled out a
piecrust. Fae, she had whispered, as if even to keep it from the cat,
was her code name. No one in the cell could know one another's real names.

She would not let him see her naked in the light, but since he also was
not allowed to visit during the day this was hardly a problem. She
waited for him on the appointed evenings, sitting naked under the
blanket, reading essays on political theory or moral philosophy. "I
don't know that I understand them, I read them as poetry," she once
admitted. "I like the sound of the words, but I don't ever really expect
my slow, slanted impression of the world to change by what I read."

"Is it changing by how you live?" he asked, turning down the light and
slippinr out of his clothes.

"You think all this is new to me," she said, sighing. "You think I am
such a virgin."

"You didn't bleed the first time," he observed. "So what's to think about?"

"I know what you think," she said. "But how experienced are you, Lord
Sir Fiyero, Arjiki Prince of Kiamo Ko, Mightiest Stalker of the Thousand
Year Grasslands, Chiefest Chieftain in the Great Kells?"

"I am putty in your hands," he said, truthfully. "I married a child
bride and to preserve my power I haven't been unfaithful. Until now. You
are not like her," he said. "You don't feel like her, it doesn't feel
the same. You're more secret."

"I don't exist," she said, "so you're still not being unfaithful, either."

"Let's not be unfaithful right now then," he said, "I can't wait,"
running his hands along her ribs, down the tight plane of her stomach.
She always brought his hands to her thin, expressive breasts; she would
not be touched below the waist by hands. They moved together, blue
diamonds on a green field.


He didn't have enough to do during the days. Being the chieftain of the
Arjiki people, he knew it was in their political interest to be tied
ineluctably to the commercial hub of the Emerald City. Yet Aijiki
business concerns only required Fiyero to show his face at social
engagements, in board meetings and financial parlors. The rest of the
time he wandered about, seeking frescoes of Saint Glinda and other
saints. Elphaba-Fabala-Elphie-Fae would never tell him what she had been
doing in the chapel of Saint Glinda attached to the mauntery in Saint
Glinda's Square.

One day he looked up Avaric and they had lunch. Avaric suggested a
girlie show afterward, and Fiyero begged off. Avaric was opinionated,
cynical, corrupt, and as good-looking as ever. There wasn't much gossip
to bring back to Elphaba.

The wind tore the leaves from the trees. The Gale Force continued to
frog-march Animals and collaborators out of town. Interest rates in the
Gillikin banks went soaring up-good for investors, bad for those who had
adjustable rate loans. Foreclosures on a lot of valuable city-centre
properties. Too early, businesses began stringing the green and gold lights

of Lurlinemas, trying to woo cautious and depressed citizens into the shops.

More than anything else he wanted to walk the streets of the Emerald
City with Elphaba-there was no more beautiful place to be in love,
especially at dusk as the shop lights went on, golden against the
blue-purple evening sky. He had never been in love before, he now saw.
It humbled him. It scared him. He couldn't bear it when their forced
absence went four or five days.

"Kisses to Irji, Manek, and Nor," he wrote on the bottom of his weekly
letter to Sarima, who couldn't write back because, among other things,
she had never learned either alphabet. Somehow her silence seemed a
tacit approval of this vow-shattering interlude. He didn't write kisses
to her, too. He hoped the chocolates would do.


He rolled over, tugging the blanket with him; she tugged it back. The
air in the room was so cold it seemed clammy. Malky endured their
thrashing legs in order to stay near them, to receive warmth, and to
give whatever passes for affection in cats.

"My darling Fae," said Fiyero. "You probably know this, and I'm not
about to become a co-conspirator at whatever it is you're working
for-reducing library fines or revoking the need for cat collars or
whatever. But I do keep my ears open. The Quadlings are under the thumb
of the marching militia again. At least that's what they're saying in
the lounge of the club, over newspapers and pipes. Apparently an army
division has gone down into Quadling Country as far as Qhoyre, on some
sort of a slash-and-burn mission. Your father, your brother, and
Nessarose-are they still there?"

Elphaba didn't answer for a while. She seemed to be working out not only
what she wanted to say, but perhaps even what she could remember. Her
expression was of puzzlement, even testiness. She said, "We lived in
Qhoyre for a time, when I was about ten. It's a funny little low town,
built on boggy ground. Half the streets are canals. The roofs are low,
the windows are grilled or louvred to provide privacy and ventilanon,
the air is steamy and the flora excessive-huge roundels of palmy leaf,
almost like shallow quilted pillows, making a sound as they beat against
each other in the wind-tirrr tirrr, tirrr tirrr."

"I don't know that there's much of Qhoyre left," said FIyero carefully.
"If the gossip I picked up is accurate."

"No, Papa isn't there now, thank-thank whoever, whatever, thank
nothing," continued Elphaba. "Unless things have changed. The good
people of Qhoyre weren't very responsive to missionary efforts. They'd
invite Papa and me in, serve us little damp cakelets and lukewarm red
mint tea. We'd all sit on low, mildewing cushions, scaring geckos and
spiders into the deeper shadows. Papa would drone on about the generous
nature of the Unnamed God, doing his basic xenophiiac slant. He pointed
to me as proof. I would grin with horrible sweetness and sing a hymn-the
only music Papa approved of. I was miserably shy and ashamed of my
color, but Papa had convinced me of the value of this work. Invariably
the gentle citizens of Qhoyre would capitulate out of hospitality.
They'd allow themselves to be led in prayers to the Unnamed God, but you
couldn't say their hearts were in it. I think I sensed a great deal
more-more dishearteningiy than Papa did-how ineffectual we really were."

"So where are they now? Papa, Nessarose, and the boy-your brother,
what's his name?"

"Shell, that's his name. Well, Papa felt his work was farther south in
Quadling Country, in the real outback. We had a series of small cramped
homes around Ovvels-the Hovels in Ovvels, we called them- that dreary,
beastly countryside, full of a bloody beauty."

At his questioning expression she continued. "I mean, fifteen, twenty
years ago, Fiyero, the Emerald City speculators discovered the ruby
deposits there. First under the Ozma Regent, then after the coup, under
the Wizard: same ugly business practices. Though under the Ozma Regent
the exploitation did not require murder and brutality. Using elephants,
the engineers hauled in gravel, they dammed up springs, they perfected a
complicated system of strip mining under three feet of brackish
groundwater. Papa thought this disarray in their little moist society
was a situation ready-made for mission work. And he was right. The
Quadlings struggled against the Wizard with ill-argued proclamations,
they resorted to totems, but their only military weapons were
slingshots. So they rallied around my father. He converted them, they
went into the struggle with the zeal of the newly chastised. They were
dispossessed and disappeared. All with the benefit of unionist grace."

"My, you're bitter."

"I was a tool. My dear father used me-and Nessarose less so, because of
her trouble moving about-he used me as an object lesson. Looking as I
did, even singing as I can-they trusted him partly as a response to the
freakiness of me. If the Unnamed God could love me, how much more
responsible it'd be to the unadulterated them."

"So, my dear, you don't care where he is, or what happens to him now?"

"How can you say that?" She sat up, steaming. "I love the mad old
tunnel-visioned bastard. He really believed in what he preached. He even
thought that a Quadling corpse found floating faceup in a brackwater
pond-provided it had a tattoo of conversion on it somewhere-was better
off than a survivor. He felt he'd written a single ticket to the Other
Land assembly of the Unnamed God. I think he considered it work well done."

"And you don't?" Fiyero had a fairly anemic spiritual life; he felt
unqualified to voice an opinion about her father's vocation.

"Maybe it was work well done," she said sadly. "How do I know? But not
for me. Settlement by settlement we reaped converts. Settlement by
settlement the civil engineering corps came in, to detonate the village
life. There was no outcry throughout Oz proper. Nobody was listening.
Who cared about the Quadlings?"

"But what brought him there in the first place?"

"He and Mama had had a friend, a Quadling, who died in my family home-a
Quadling itinerant, a glassblower." Elphaba frowned and closed her eyes,
and would say no more. Fiyero kissed her fingernails. He kissed the V
between her thumb and forefinger, he sucked on it as if it were a lemon
rind. She slipped backward to allow him greater purchase.

A while later he said, "But Elphie-Fabala-Fae-are you really not worried
about your father and Nessarose, and little himmy-who?"

"My father chases hopeless causes. It gives his failure at life some
legitimacy. For a while he proclaimed himself a prophet of the return of
the last, lost tadpole of the Ozma line. That's over now. And my brother
Shell-he is probably fifteen by now. Look Fiyero, how can I be worried
about them and be worried about the campaign of the season too? I can't
course around Oz-on that broomstick there, like a storybook witch!-

I've chosen to go underground so that I can't worry. Besides, I know
what will happen to Nessarose at least. Sooner or later."

"What?"

"When my great-grandfather finally pops off, she'll be the next Eminent
Thropp."

"You're in line, I thought. Aren't you older?"

"I'm gone, deane, I'm magicked away in a puff of smoke. Forget it. And
you know, that'lI be good for Nessarose. She'll be a sort of local queen
out there in Nest Hardings."

"She apparently did a course in sorcery, did you know? In Shin?"

"No, I didn't. Well, bully for her. If she ever comes down off that
plinth-the one that has words written on it along the edges in gold,
reading MOST SUPERIOR IN MORAL RECTITUDE-if she ever allows herself to
be the bitch she really is, she'll be the Bitch of the East. Nanny and
the devoted staff at Coiwen Grounds will prop her up."

"I thought you were fond of her!"

"Don't you know affection when you see it?" scoffed Elphaba. "I love
Nessie. She's a pain in the neck, she's intolerably righteous, she's a
nasty piece of work. I'm devoted to her."

"She'll be the Eminent Thropp."

"Better she than I," said Elphaba dryly. "For one thing, she has great
taste in shoes."


One evening through the skylight the full moon fell heavily on Elphaba
sleeping. Fiyero had awakened and gone to take a leak into the chamber
pot. Malky was stalking mice on the stairs. Coming back, Fiyero looked
at the form of his lover, more pearly than green tonight. He had brought
her a traditional Vinkus fringed silk scarf-roses on a black
background-and he had tied it around her waist, and from then on it was
a costume for lovemaking. Tonight in sleeping she had nudged it up, and
he admired the curve of her flank, the tender fragility of her knee, the
bony ankle. There was a smell of perfume still in the air, and the
resiny, animal smell, and the smell of the mystical sea, and the sweet
cloaking smell of hair all riled up by sex. He sat by the side of the
bed and looked at her. Her pubic hair grew, almost more purple than
black, in small spangled curls, a different pattern than Sarima's. There
was an

odd shadow near the groin-for a sleepy moment he wondered if some of his
blue diamonds had, in the heat of sex, been steamed onto her own skin-or
was it a scar?

But she woke up just then, and in the moonlight covered herself with a
blanket. She smiled at him drowsily and called him "Yero, my hero," and
that melted his heart.


She could get so angry, though!

"I wouldn't be surprised if the pork roll you're devouring, in such
perfect mindless affluence, is cut from a Pig," she snapped at him once.

'just because you've already eaten, you don't need to ruin my appetite,"
he protested mildly. Free-living Animals were not much in evidence in
his home territory, and the few sentient creatures he'd known at Shin
had, except at the Philosophy Club that night, made little impression.
The plight of the Animals had not much touched him.

"This is why you shouldn't fall in love, it blinds you. Love is wicked
distraction."

"Now you have put me off my lunch." He fed the rest of the pork roll to
Malky. "What in the world do you know about wickedness? You're a bit
player in this network of renegades, aren't you? You're a novice."

"I know this: The wickedness of men is that their power breeds stupidity
and blindness," she said.

"And of women?"

"Women are weaker, but their weakness is full of cunning and an equally
rigid moral certainty. Since their arena is smaller, their capacity for
real damage is less alarming. Though being more intimate they are the
more treacherous."

"And my capacity for evil?" said Fiyero, feeling implicated and
uncomfortable. "And yours?"

"Fiyero's capacity for evil is in believing too strenuously in a
capacity for good."

"And yours?"

"Mine is in thinking in epigrams."

"You let yourself off lightly," he said, suddenly a little annoyed. "Is
that what you're engaged by your secret network to do? Generate witty
epigrams?"

"Oh, there's big doings afoot," she said, uncharacteristically. "I won't
be at the center of it, but I'll be on the fringes helping out, believe me."

"What are you talking about? A coup?"

"Never you mind, and you'll stay blameless. Just as you want to be."
This was nastiness on her part.

"An assassination? And so what if you do kill some General Butcher? What
does that make you? A saint? A saint of the revolution? Or a martyr if
you're killed in the campaign?"

She wouldn't answer. She shook her narrow head in irritation, then flung
the rosy shawl across the room as if it infuriated her.

"What if some innocent bystander is killed as you aim for General Pig
Butcher?"

"I don't know or care much about martyrs," she said. "All that smacks of
a higher plan, a cosmology-something I don't believe in. If we can't
comprehend the plan at hand, how could a higher plan make any more
sense? But were I to believe in martyrdom, I suppose I'd say you can
only be a martyr if you know what you are dying for, and choose it."

"Ah, so then there are innocent victims in this trade. Those who don't
choose to die but are in the line of fire."

"There are . . . there will be . . . accidents, I guess."

"Can there be grief, regret, in your exalted circle? Is there any such
thing as a mistake? Is there a concept of tragedy?"

"Fiyero, you disaffected fool, the tragedy is all around us. Worrying
about anything smaller is a distraction. Any casualty of the struggle is
their fault, not ours. We don't embrace violence but we don't deny its
existence-how can we deny it when its effects are all around us? That
kind of denial is a sin, if anything is-"

"Ah-now I've heard the word I never expected to hear you say."

"Denial? Sin?"

"No. We."

"I don't know why-"

"The lone dissenter at Crage Hall turns institutional? A company gal? A
team player? Our former Miss Queen of Solitaire?"

"You misunderstand. There is a campaign but no agents, there is a game
but no players. I have no colleagues. I have no self I never did, in

fact, but that's beside the point. I am just a muscular twitch in the
larger organism."

"Hah! You the most individual, the most separate, the most real .

"Like everyone else you refer to my looks. And you make fun of them."

"I adore your looks and I acknowledge them. Fae!"

They parted that day without speaking, and he spent the evening at the
betting parlor, losing money.


The next time he saw her, he brought three green candles and three gold
candles and decorated her flat for Lurlinemas. "I don't believe in
religious feast days," she said, but relented to admit, "they are
pretty, though."

"You have no soul," he teased her.

"You're right," she answered soberly. "I didn't think it showed."

"You're only playing word games now."

"No," she said, "what proof have I of a soul?"

"How can you have a conscience if you don't have a soul?" he asked
despite himself-he wanted to keep things light, to get back onto a
better footing after their last episode of moral wrestling and estrangement.

"How can a bird feed its young if it has no consciousness of before and
after? A conscience, Yero my hero, is only consciousness in another
dimension, the dimension of time. What you call conscience I prefer to
call instinct. Birds feed their young without understanding why, without
weeping about how all that is born must die, sob sob. I do my work with
a similar motivation: the movement in the gut toward food, fairness, and
safety. I am a pack animal wheeling with the herd, that's all. I'm a
forgettable leaf on a tree."

"Since your work is terrorism, that's the most extreme argument for
crime I've ever heard. You're eschewing all personal responsibility.
It's as bad as those who sacrifice their personal will into the gloomy
morasses of the unknowable will of some unnameable god. If you suppress
the idea of personhood then you suppress the notion of individual
culpability."

"What is worse, Fiyero? Suppressing the idea of personhood or
suppressing, through torture and incarceration and starvation, real
living persons? Look: Would you worry about saving one precious
sentimental por

trait in a museum of fine arts when the city around you is on fire and
real people are burning to death? Keep some proportion in all this!"

"But even some innocent bystander-say an annoying society dame-is a real
person, not a portrait. Your metaphor is distracting and belittling,
it's a blind excuse for crime."

"A society dame has chosen to parade herself as a living portrait. She
must be treated as such. It's her due. That denial of it, that'syour
evil, to go back to the other day. I say you save the innocent bystander
if you can, even if she's a society dame, or he's a captain of industry
thriving mightily on all these repressive moves-but not, not, not at the
expense of other, realer people. And if you can't save them, you can't.
Everything costs."

"I don't believe in this concept of 'real' or 'realer' people."

"You don't?" She smiled, not nicely. "When I do disappear again, deane,
I'll surely be less real than I am now." She made to simulate sex
against him; he turned his head, surprised at the vigor of his aversion.


Later that night, when they had made up, she suffered a racking paroxysm
and painful sweats. She would not let him touch her. "You should go
away, I'm not worthy of you," she moaned, and some time later, when she
was calmer, she murmured before sleeping again, "I love you so much,
Fiyero, you just don't understand: Being born with a talent or an
inclination for goodness is the aberration."

She was right. He didn't understand. He wiped her brow with a dry towel
and kept close to her. There was frost on the skylight, and they slept
beneath their winter coats to keep warm.


One brisk afternoon he sent off a propitiatory package of bright wooden
toys for the children and a jeweled torque for Sarima. The pack train
was going around the Great Kells via the northern route. It wouldn't
deliver Lurlinemas presents to Kiamo Ko until well into the spring, but
he could pretend to have sent them earlier. If the snows held off, he
would be home by then, restless and chafing in the tall narrow rooms of
the mountain stronghold, but maybe he would get the credit for
thoughtfulness. And perhaps deserved, why not? To be sure, Sanima would
be in her winter doldrums (as distinct from her spring moods, her summer
ennui, and

her congenital autumn condition). A torque eventually would cheer her
up, at least a little.

He stopped for a coffee in a cafe in a neighborhood just enough off the
beaten track to be both bohemian and pricey. The management apologized:

The winter garden, usually heated with braziers and brazen with
expensive forced flowers, had been the site of an explosion the night
before. "The neighborhood is troubled; who'd have thought it?" said the
manager, touching Fiyero on the elbow. "Our Glorious Wizard was to have
eradicated civil unrest: wasn't that the whole point of curfews and
containment laws?"

Fiyero was not inclined to comment, and the manager took his silence for
agreement. "I've moved a few tables into my private parlor up the
stairs, if you don't mind roughing it amidst my family memorabilia," he
said, leading the way. "Finding good Munchkinlander help to repair the
damage is getting harder, too. The Munchkinlander tiktok touch, there's
nothing like it. But a lot of our friends in the service sector have
'gone back to their eastern farms. Scared of violence against them-well,
so many of them are so small, don't you think they seem to provoke it?-
they're all cowards." He interrupted himself to say, "I can tell you
have no Munchkinlander relatives or I wouldn't comment this way."

"My wife is from Nest Hardings," said Fiyero, lying unconvincingly, but
the point was made.

"I recommend the cherry chocolate frappe today, fresh and delicious,"
said the manager, retreating into repentant formality, and pulling out a
chair at a table near high old windows. Fiyero sat and looked out. One
fretted shutter had warped and couldn't fold back against the outer wall
as designed, but there was still enough of a view. Rooflines, ornamental
chimney pots, the odd high window box stuffed with dark winter pansies,
and pigeons swooping and scissoring like lords of the sky.

The manager was of that peculiar stock; after so many generations in the
Emerald City, it seemed a separate ethnic strand. The paintings of his
family showed the bright gimlet hazel eyes, and refined receding
hairlines on men and women alike (and plucked into the scalps of
children, too, in the fashion of the Emerald City upwardly yearning
middle class). At the sight of simpering boys in pink satin with
frizzy-headed lapdogs, and girlettes in womanish dark rouge and plunging
necklines (revealing their innocent lack of breasts), Fiyero felt the
sudden longing, again, for

his own cold and distant children. Though bruised by their particular
family life-and who wasn't?-in his memory Irji, Manek, and Nor managed
more integrity than these hothouse scions of a family on the make.

But that was cruel, and he was responding to artistic convention, not to
the actual children. He turned his gaze out the window when the order
came, to avoid hideous art, to avoid the other people in the salon.

Having coffee in the winter garden below usually provided a view of
vine-covered brick walls, shrubs, and the occasional marble statue of
some improbably beautiful and vulnerably naked stripling. However, from
a flight up, one could see over the wall, into an interior mews area.
One part was a stables, another a neighborhood toilet, apparently; and
just within the range of his vision was the wall broken by the
explosion. Some sort of twisted, thorny wire netting had been erected
across the opening, which led into a schoolyard.

As he watched, one of the doors of the adjacent school was pushed open,
and a small crowd emerged, shaking and stretching into the sunlight.
There seemed to be-Fiyero peered-a couple of elderly Quadling women and
some adolescent male Quadlings, straplings with early mustaches making a
bluish-colored shadow against their fine rose-rust skin. Five, six,
seven Quadlings-and a couple of stout men who might have been part
Gillikinese, it was hard to tell-and a family of bears. No- Bears.
Smallish Red Bears, a mother and father and a toddler.

The little Bear went unerringly to some balls and hoops under the
stairs. The Quadlings made a circle and began to sing and dance. The old
ones, with arthritic steps, joined their hands with the teenagers and
moved in a widdershins pattern, in and out, as if making a clock face
that reversed the clockwise movement of time. The stocky Gillikinese men
shared a cigarette and gazed out the wiry barrier across the break in
the wall. The Red Bears were more dispirited. The male sat on the wooden
edge of a sandlot, tubbing his eyes and combing the fur below his chin.
The female moved back and forth, kicking at the ball just often enough
to keep the cub occupied, then stroking the bowed head of her mate.

Fiyero sipped his drink and inched forward. If there were, what, twelve
prisoners, and only a wire fence between them and freedom, why didn't
they rush it? \Vhy were they separated into their racial and species groups?

After ten minutes the doors opened again and a Gale Forcer came

out, trim and-yes, Fiyero had to admit it at last-terrifyIng. Terrifying
in the brick red uniform with the green boots, and the emerald cross
that quartered the breast of the shirt, one vertical strap from groin to
high starched collar, the other strap from armpit to armpit across the
pectorals. He was only a youth whose curly hair was so blond as to look
nearly white in the winter sun. He stood with legs apart on the step of
the school's verandah.

Though Fiyero couldn't hear a thing through the closed window, the
soldier apparently gave a command. The Bears stiffened and the cub began
to wail and clutch the ball to itself. The Gillikinese men came and
stood quiescently ready. The Quadlings ignored the order and kept on
with their dance. They swung their hips, and they held their arms at
shoulder height, moving their hands in a semaphoric message, though what
it meant Fiyero could only guess. He had never seen a Quadling before.

The Gale Forcer raised his voice. He had a truncheon in a thong ioop at
his waist. The cub hid behind the father, and the mother could be seen
to growl.

Work together, Fiyero found himself thinking, hardly aware he could have
such a thought. Work as a team-there are twelve of you and only one of
him. Is it your differences from one another that keep you docile? Or
are there relatives inside who will be tortured if you make a break for
freedom?

It was all speculation; Fiyero couldn't tell the dynamics of the
situation, but he was riveted. He realized his hand was open, palm up
against the glass of the window. Below, because the Bears had not stood
to join the lineup, the soldier raised his cudgel and it came down on
the skull of the cub. Fiyero's body jerked, he spilled his drink and the
cup broke, porcelain shards on the buttery herringbone-laid oak flooring.

The manager appeared from behind a green baize door and tutted, and
twitched the drapes closed, but not before Fiyero had seen one last
thing. Recoiling as if he had never hunted and killed in the Thousand
Year Grasslands, he averted his eyes and they wheeled upward, where he
glimpsed the pale blond coins of faces-two or three dozen schoolchildren
in the upper windows of the school, staring down with fascination and
open mouths at the scene in their playing field.

"They have no concern for neighbors who have a business to run,

bills to pay, and loved ones to feed," snapped the manager. "You don't
need to see those antics as you enjoy your coffee, sir."

"The disruption in your winter garden," said Fiyero. "That was someone
trying to break down your wall into that yard, and get them out alive."

"Don't even suggest it," shot the manager in a low voice. "There are
more ears in this room than yours and mine. How do I know who was up to
what, or why? I'm a private citizen and I mind my own business."

Fiyero didn't take a replacement cup of cherry chocolate. There were
racking cries from the mother Bear, and then a silence in the world
outside the heavy damask drapes. Was it an accident I saw that, Fiyero
wondered, looking at the manager with new eyes. Otis it just that the
world unwraps itself to you, again and again, as soon as you are ready
to see it anew?


He wanted to tell Elphie what he had seen, but he held back for reasons
he couldn't name. In some way, in the balance of their affections, he
sensed she needed an identity separate from his. Were he to become a
convert to her cause, she might drift away. He did not dare to risk it.
But the vision of the battered Bear cub haunted him. He held Elphie the
tighter, trying to communicate a deeper passion without speaking it.

He noticed, too, that when she was agitated she was the more liberal in
her lovemaking. He began to be able to tell when she was going to say
"Not till next week." She seemed more abandoned, more salacious, perhaps
as a cleansing exercise before disappearing for a few days. One morning,
as he was stealing some of the cat's milk for his coffee, she rubbed
some oil on her skin, wincing with sensitivity, and said over her
shoulder of soft green marble, "A fortnight, my dear. My pet, as my
father used to say. I need a fortnight of privacy now."

He had a sudden pang, a premonition, that she was going to leave him. It
was a way for her to get two weeks' head start. "No!" he said. "That's
not on, Fae-Fae. It's not all right, it's too long."

"We need it." She expanded: "Not you and I, I mean the other we.
Obviously I can't tell you what we're about, but the last plans for the
autumn campaign are falling into place. There's going to be an episode-
I can't say more-and I must be available to the network at all times."

"A coup?" he said. "An assassination? A bomb? A kidnapping? \Vhat?Just
the nature of it, not the specifics, what?"

"Not only can I not tell you," she said, "I don't even know. I'll be
told only my small part, and I'll do it. I only know it's a complicated
maneuver with a lot of interlocking pieces."

"Are you the dart?" he said. "Are you the knife? The fuse?"

She said (though he wasn't convinced): "My deane, my poppet, I am too
green to walk into a public place and do something bad. It's all too
expected. Security guards watch me like owls on a mouse. My very
presence provokes alarm and heightened vigilance. No, no, the part I'll
play will be a handmaiden's part, a little assistance in the shadows."

"Don't do it," he said.

"You're selfish," she said, "and you're a coward. I love you, my sweet,
but your protests about this are wrongheaded. You just want to preserve
my insignificant life, you don't even have a moral feeling about whether
I'm doing right or wrong. Not that I want you to, not that I care what
you think about it. But I only observe, your objections are of the
weakest sort. Now this isn't something to be argued. Two weeks from
tonight, come back."

"Will the-the action-be completed by then? Who decides?"

"I don't know what it is yet, and I don't even know who decides, so
don't ask me."

"Fae-" Suddenly he didn't like her code name anymore. "Elphaba. Do you
really not know who is pulling the strings that make you move? How do
you know you're not being manipulated by the Wizard?"

"You are a novice at this, for all your status as a tribal prince!" she
said. "Why shouldn't I know if I was being a pawn of the Wizard? I could
tell when I was being manipulated by that harridan, Madame Morrible. I
learned something about prevarication and straight talking back at Crage
Hall. Give me the credit for having spent some years at this, Fiyero."

"You can't tell me for sure who is or isn't the boss."

"Papa didn't know the name of his Unnamed God," she said, rising and
rubbing oil on her stomach and between her legs, but modestly turning
her back to him. "It never is the who, is it? It's always the why."

"How do you hear? How do they tell you what to do?"

"Look, you know I can't say."

"I know you can."

She turned. "Oil my breasts, will you." "I'm not that stupidly male,
Elphaba."

"Yes you are"-she laughed, but lovingly-"come on."

It was daylight, the wind roared and even shook the floorboards. The
cold sky above the glass was a rare pinkish blue. She dropped her
shyness like a nightgown, and in the liquid glare of sunlight on old
boards she held up her hands-as if, in the terror of the upcoming
skirmish, she had at last understood that she was beautiful. In her way.

The collapse of her reticence frightened him more than anything else.

He took some coconut oil and warmed it between his palms, and slid his
hands like leathery velvet animals on her small, responding breasts. The
nipples stood, the color flushed. He was already fully dressed, but
recklessly he pressed himself against her mildly resisting form. One
hand slid down her back; she arched against him, moaning. But perhaps,
this time, not from need?

Still his hand moved down onto her buttocks, felt between her cheeks,
beyond, felt the place one muscle pulled in crookedly, endearingly, felt
the very faintest etching of hair beginning its crosshatch shadows, its
swirl toward vortex. He worked his intelligent hand, reading the signs
of her resistance.

"I have four companions," she said suddenly, wrenching away in a motion
soft enough not to disengage but to discourage. "Oh heart, I have four
comrades; they don't know who our cell leader is, it's all done in the
dark, with a masking spell to shadow the voice and distort the features.
If I knew more, the Gale Force could catch me and torture it out of me,
don't you see?"

"What is your object?" he breathed, kissing her, loosening his trousers
again, as if this were the first time, his tongue tracing the twisting
funnel of her ear.

"Kill the Wizard," she answered, looping her legs around him. "I am not
the arrowhead, I am not the dart, I am just the shaft, the quiver-" She
cupped more oil in her hand and as they slid and fell into the light,
she made him bright and anguished with oil, took him deeper in than ever
before.

"Even after all this time, you could be an agent for the Palace," she
said later.

"I'm not," he said. "I'm good."

                                * * *

A little snow fell one week, then some more the next. The feast of
Lurlinemas drew nearer. The unionist chapels, having appropriated and
transformed the most visible parts of the old pagan beliefs, hung
themselves shamelessly in green and gold, set out green candles and
golden gongs and greenberry wreaths and gilded fruit, Along Merchant
Row, shops outdid themselves (and the churches) in decor, with displays
of fashionable clothes, and useless and expensive trinkets. In display
windows, papier-machr figures evoked the good Fairy Queen Lurline in her
winged chariot, and her assistant, the minor fairy Preenella, who
strewed gift-wrapped delights from her capacious magic basket.

He asked himself, again and again, if he was in love with Elphaba.

He also asked himself why he was so late coming to this question, after
two months of a passionate affair; and if he knew what the words even
meant; and if it mattered.

He chose more gifts for the kids and for sulky Sarima, that well-fed
malcontent, that monster. He missed her a little; his feelings for
Elphaba seemed not to vie with those for Sarima, but to complement them.
No two women could be more unlike, Flphaba demonstrated the proud
independence of Arjiki mountain women that Sarima, married so young, had
never developed. And Elphie wasn't just a different (not to say novel)
provincial type-she seemed an advance on the gender, she seemed a
different species sometimes. He caught himself with a mammoth erection
just remembering that last time, and he had to hide himself behind some
ladies' scarves in a shop until it subsided.

He bought three, four, six scarves for Sarima, who didn't wear scarves.
He bought six scarves for Fiphaba, who did.

The shop girl, a dull Munchkinlander midget who had to stand on a chair
to reach the till, said over his shoulder, 'just in a minute, ma'am." He
turned to make room at the counter for the other customer.

"But Master Fiyero!" cried Glinda.

"Miss Glinda," he said, flabbergasted. "What a surprise."

"A dozen scarves," she said. "Look, Crope, look who's here!"

And there was Crope, a little jowly though he couldn't be twenty-five
yet, could he?-looking guiltily up from a display of feathery, plumy things.

"We must have tea," said Glinda, "we must. Come now. Pay the

nice little lady and off we fly." In her voluminous skirts she rustled
like a corps of ballerinas.

He hadn't remembered her quite so giddy; maybe this was married life. He
slid a glance at Crope, who was rolling his eyes behind her back.

'just you put this on Sir Chuifrey's account, and this, and this,"
Glinda said, mounding things on the counter, "and have them sent along
to our rooms in the Florinthwaite Club. I'll need them for dining so
have someone run over with them right now if you would. How dear. So
kind. Ta ta. Boys, come along."

She gripped Fiyero with a pinching hand and steered him away; Crope
followed like a lapdog. The Florinthwaite Club was only a street or two
over and they could easily have carried the purchases back themselves.
Glinda capered and clattered down the grand staircase into the Oak
Parlor, making enough noise so that every female resident looked up in a
rewarding sort of disapproval.

"Now, you, Crope, there, so you can be Mother and pour when we've
ordered, and dear Fiyero, you here, right next to me, that is if you're
not too married."

They ordered tea; Glinda got used to him a bit and began to calm down.

"But really, who would have thought it?" she said, picking up a biscuit
and putting it down again, about eight times in a row. "We were the
great and the good at Shin, really. Look at you, Fiyero-you're a prince,
aren't you? Do we call you Your Highness? I never could. And you're
still married to that little child?"

"She's grown up now, and we have a family," Fiyero told her warily.
"Three children."

"And she's here. I must meet her."

"No, she's back at our winter home in the Great Kells."

"Then you're having an affair," said Glinda, "because you look so happy.
Who with? Anyone I know?"

"I'm just happy to see you;" he said; and in fact he was. She looked
wonderful. She had filled out some. That wraithlike beauty had bloomed
but not coarsened. She was more woman than waif, and more wife than
woman. Her hair was cut short in a boyish style, very becoming, and
there was a tiaralike thing in her curls. "And now you're a sorceress."

"Oh hardiy," she said. "Can I even get that damned serving girl to hurry
up with the scones and jam? I can not. Yes, I can sign a hundred
greeting cards for the holiday season at one go. But it's a very minor
talent, I tell you. Sorcery is vastly overrated in the popular press.
Otherwise, why wouldn't the Wizard just magick the hell out of his
adversaries? No, I'm content to try to be a good partner for my
Chuifrey. He's at the exchange today, doing financial thingies. Oh do
you know who else is in town? It's too rich, Crope tell him."

Crope, surprised to be given an opening, choked on his mouthful of tea.
Glinda rushed in. "Nessarose! Can you believe it? She's at the family
home over there in Lower Mennipin Street-an address that's come up quite
a lot in the past decade, I might add. We saw her where, Crope, where?
It was the Coffee Emporium-"

"It was the Ice Garden-"

"No, I remember, it was the Spangletown Cabaret! Fiyero do you know, we
went to see that old Sillipede, do you remember? No you don't, I can see
it in your face. She was the singer who was performing at the Oz
Festival of Song and Sentiment the day our Glorious Wizard arrived out
of the sky in a balloon and orchestrated that coup! She's making yet
another of her innumerable comeback tours. She's a bit camp now but so
what, it was gales of fun. And there at a better table than we had, I
might tell you, was Nessie! She was with her grandfather, or is it the
great-grandfather? The Eminent Thropp? He must be eleventy-hundredy
years old by now. I was shocked to see her until I realized she went
merely to provide him an escort. She didn't think much of the music-she
scowled and prayed all through the entr'acte. And the Nanny was there
too. Who would've imagined it, Fiyero-you're a prince, and Nessarose
just about installed as the next Eminent Thropp, and Avaric, of course,
the Margreave of Tenmeadows, and humble little me-eee married to Sir
Chuffrey, holder of the most useless title and the biggest stock
portfolio in the Pertha Hills?" Glinda almost stopped for breath, but
lunged on kindly, "And Crope, of course, dear Crope. Crope, tell Fiyero
all about yourself, he's dying to know, I can see it."

Actually Fiyero was interested, if only for a rest from the staccato
chatter.

"He's shy," Glinda pushed on, "shy shy shy, always was." Fiyero

and Crope exchanged glances and tried to keep their mouths from
twitching. "He's got this so avant-garde little palace of a loft
apartment on the top floor of a doctor's surgery, could you imagine?
Stunning views, the best views in the Emerald City, and at this time of
year! He dabbles a bit in painting, don't you dear? Painting, a little
musical operetta set design here and there. When we were young we
thought the world revolved around Shin. You know there's real theatre
here now, the Wizard has made this a much more cosmopolitan city, don't
you think?"

"It's good to see you, Fiyero," said Crope, "say something about
yourself, fast, before it's too late."

"You cad, you kid me mercilessiy," sang Glinda. "I'll tell him about
your little affair with-well never mind. I'm not that mean."

"There's nothing to say," Fiyero said, feeling even more taciturn and
Vinkus than he had when he first arrived in Shin. "I like my life, I
lead my clan when they need it, which isn't often. My children are
healthy. My wife is-well, I don't know..

"Fertile," supplied Glinda.

"Yes." He grinned. "She's fertile and I love her, and I'm not going to
stay much longer as I'm meeting someone for a business conference across
town."

"We must meet," said Glinda, suddenly plaintive, suddenly looking
lonely. "Oh Fiyero, we're not old yet, but we're old enough to be old
friends already, aren't we? Look, I've gushed on like a debutante who
forgot to splash on her Eau d'Demure. I'm sorry. It's just that that was
such a wonderful time, even in its strangeness and sadness-and life
isn't the same now. It's wonderful, but it isn't the same."

"I know," he said, "but I don't think I can meet you again. There's so
little time, and I have to go back to Kiamo Ko. I've been away since the
late summer."

"Look, we're all here, me and Chuifrey, Crope, Nessarose, you-is Avaric
around, we could get him? We could get together, we could have a quiet
dinner together in our rooms upstairs. I promise not to be so giddy.
Please, Fiyero, please, Your Highness. It would do me such an honor."
She cocked her head and put a single finger to her chin, elegantly, and
he could tell she was struggling through the language of her class to
say something real.

"If I think I can, I'll let you know, but please, you mustn't count on
it," he said. "There'll be other times. I'm not usually in town so late
in the season-this is an anomaly. My children are waiting-have you
children, Glinda?"

"Chuifrey is dry as two baked walnuts," said Glinda, making Crope choke
on his tea again. "Before you go-I can see you're getting ready to
dash-dear, dear Fiyero-what do you hear from Elphaba?"

But he was prepared for this, and had readied his face to be blank, and
he only said, "Now that's a name I don't hear every day. Did she ever
turn up? Surely Nessarose must have said."

"Nessarose says if her sister ever does turn up she'll spit in her
face," Glinda remarked, "so we must all pray that Nessarose never loses
her faith, for that would mean the evaporation of such tolerance and
kindness. I think she would kill Elphaba. Nessa was abandoned, rejected,
left to look after her crazy father, her grandfather-thingy, that
brother, that nurse, that house, the staff-and you can't even say
single-handedly, as she doesn't have any hands!"

"I thought I saw Elphaba once," said Crope.

"Oh?" said Fiyero and Glinda together, and Glinda continued, "You never
told me that, Crope."

"I wasn't sure," he said. "I was on the trolley that runs along the
reflecting pool by the Palace. It was raining-some years ago now-and I
saw a figure struggling with a big umbrella. I thought she was about to
be blown away. A gust of wind blew the umbrella inside out and the face,
a greenish face which is why I noticed, ducked down to avoid the splash
of rainwater-you remember how Elphaba hated getting wet."

"She was allergic to water," Glinda opined. "I never knew how she kept
herself so clean, and I her roommate."

"Oil, I think," said Fiyero. They both looked at him. "That is, in the
Vinkus," he stammered, "the elderly rub oil into their skin instead of
water-I've always assumed that's what Elphie did. I don't know. Glinda,
if I were to meet up with you again, what's a good day?"

She rooted in her reticule for a diary. Crope took the opportunity to
lean forward and say to Fiyero, "It really is good to see you, you know."

"You too," said Fiyero, surprised that he meant it. "If you ever get

out into the central Kells, come stay at Kiamo Ko with us.Just send word
ahead, as we're only there for half a year at a time."

"That's just your speed, Crope, the wild beasts of the untamed Vinkus,"
said Glinda. "I think the fashion possibilities, all those leather
thongs and fringe and such, they might interest you, but I can't see you
as Mister Mountain Boy."

"No, probably not," agreed Crope. "Unless it affords fabulous cafes
every four or five blocks, I don't think a landscape quite developed
enough for human habitation."

Fiyero shook hands with Crope and then, remembering the rumors about
poor Tibbett's deterioration, kissed him; he threw his arms around
Glinda and hugged her hard. She laced her arm through his and walked him
to the door.

"Do let me shake off Crope and have you back, all to myself," she said
in a low voice, her patter evaporating into seriousness. "I can't tell
you, dear Fiyero. The past seems both more mysterious and more
understandable with you right here before me. I feel there are things I
could yet learn. I don't want to wallow, dear boy, never that! But we go
way back." She held his hand between hers. "Something's going on in your
life. I'm not as dumb as I act. Something good and bad at the same time.
Maybe I can help."

"You were always sweet," he said, and motioned to the doorman to hail a
hansom cab. "How I regret that I won't meet Sir Chuffrey."

He moved out the doorway, across the marble entrance pavement, and
turned to tip his hat at her. In the doors (the doormen held them open
to enhance his parting view) she was a calm, resigned woman, neither
transparent nor ineffectual-even, it might have been said, a woman full
of grace. "If you should see her," said Glinda lightly, "tell her I miss
her still."


He didn't see Glinda again. He didn't call at the Florinthwaite Club. He
didn't stroll past the Thropp family house in Lower Mennipin Street
(though he was sorely tempted). He didn't stop a scalper to try to get
one of the tickets to Sillipede's triumphant fourth annual comeback
tour. He found himself in the Chapel of Saint Glinda in Saint Glinda
Square, from which he could sometimes hear the cloistered maunts next
door chanting and susurrating like a swarm of bees.

When the two weeks had passed at last, and the city was worked up to a
froth over Lurlinemas, he went to see Elphaba, half-expecting she would
have vanished.

But there she was, stern and loving and in the midst of making a
vegetable pie for him. Her precious Malky was putting his feet in the
flour and making paw prints all over the room. They talked awkwardly
until Malky upset the bowl of vegetable stock, and that made them both
laugh.

He didn't tell her about Glinda. How could he? Elphaba had worked so
hard to keep them all at bay, and now she was engaged in the major
campaign of her life, the thing she had been working toward for five
years. He did not approve of anarchy (well, he knew he was in lazy doubt
about everything; doubt was much more energy efficient than conviction).
But even after seeing the Bear cub struck down, he had to keep an even,
cautious relationship with the Power on the throne-for the sake of his
tribe.

Also, Fiyero didn't want to make Elphie's life harder than it was. And
his selfish need to be comfortable with her surmounted his need to
gossip. So he didn't tell her Nessarose and Nanny were in town either,
or had been. (For all he knew, he rationalized silently, they had
already moved on.)

"I wonder," she said that night, as the stars peered through the crazy
frost pattern on the skylight, "I wonder if you should get out of town
before Lurlinemas Eve."

"Is all hell going to break loose?"

"I told you, I don't know the whole picture; I can't know; I shouldn't
know. But maybe some hell will break loose. Maybe it would be best for
you to go."

"I'm not going and you can't make me."

"I've been taking correspondence courses in sorcery on the side, I'll go
puff and turn you into stone."

"You mean you'll make me hard? I'm already hard."

"Stop. Stop."

"Oh you wicked woman, you have bewitched me again, look, it has a mind
of its own-"

"Fiyero stop. Stop. Now look, I mean it. I want to know where you're
going to be on Lurlinemas Eve. Just so I can be sure you're not going to
get hurt. Tell me."

"You mean we won't be together?"

"It's a work night for me,' she said grimly. "I'll see you the next day."

"I'll wait here for you."

"No you won't. I think we've covered our tracks pretty well, but there's
still a chance even at this late date that somebody could come here to
intercept me. No-you stay in your club and take a bath. Take a nice long
cold bath. Got it? Don't even go out. They say it might be snowy by then
anyway."

"It's Lurlinemas Eve! I'm not going to spend the holiday in a bathtub
all alone."

"Well, hire some company, see ff1 care."

"As if you don't."

'just stay away from anything social, I mean theatre or crowds, or even
restaurants, please, will you promise me that?"

"If you could be more specific I could be more careful."

"You could be most careful if you left town completely."

"You could be most careful if you told me-"

"Give over with that, cut it out. I don't think I even want to know
where you are, come to think of it. Ijust want you to be safe. Will you
be safe? Will you stay inside, away from drunken pagan celebrations?"

"Can I go to chapel and pray for you?"

"No." She looked so fierce that he didn't even tease her about it again.

"Why should I keep myself so safe?" he asked her, but he was almost
asking himself. What is there in my life worth preserving? With a good
wife back there in the mountains, serviceable as an old spoon, dry in
the heart from having been scared of marriage since she was six? With
three children so shy of their father, the Prince of the Ailikis, that
they will hardly come near him? With a careworn clan moving here, moving
there, going through the same disputes, herding the same herds, praying
the same prayers, as they have done for five hundred years? And me, with
a shallow and undirected mind, no artfulness in word or habit, no
especial kindness toward the world? What is there that makes my life
worth preserving?

"I love you," said Elphaba.

"So that's that then, and that's it," he answered her, and himself. "And
I love you. So I promise to be careful."

Careful of us both, he thought.

                                * * *

So he stalked her again. Love makes hunters of us all. She had swathed
herself in long dark skirts, like some sort of a religious woman, and
tucked up her hair inside a tall wide-brimmed hat with a crown like a
cone. There was a dark scarf, purple and gold, wound around her neck,
and pulled over her mouth, though she would need more than a scarf to
mask that lovely prow of a nose. She wore elegant, tight-fitting gloves,
a nicer type of accessory than she usually went in for, though he feared
it was to allow for nimbler control of her hands. Her feet were lost in
big, steel-toed boots like the kind worn by miners in the Glikkus.

If you didn't know she was green, it would be hard to tell-in this dark
afternoon, in this raking skittle of snow.

She didn't look behind her; perhaps she didn't care if she was being
followed. Her circuit took her around some of the major squares of the
city. She ducked in for a minute to the chapel of Saint Glinda next to
the mauntery, the one where he had first seen her. Perhaps she was
getting last-minute instructions, but she didn't try to give him (or
anyone else) the slip. She emerged in a minute or two.

Or perhaps-perish the thought-she was actually praying for guidance and
strength?

She crossed the Law Courts Bridge, she wandered along the Ozma
Embankment and cut diagonally through the abandoned rose gardens of the
Royal Mall. The snow pestered her; she kept twining her cape the more
tightly around; the silhouette of her thin, dark-stockinged legs in
those huge comical boots showed up against the snowy blankness of the Oz
Deer Park (now of course bereft of Deer and deer). She marched, head
tucked down, past the cenotaphs and obelisks and memorial tablets to the
Magnfficent Dead of this escapade or that. The decades-Fiyero thought,
in love with her or at least so frightened for her that he could mistake
it for love-the decades looked on and didn't notice her passing. They
stared from their fixed mounts across at each other and didn't see
revolution striding between them, on her way to destiny.

But the Wizard must not be her aim. She must have told the truth in
saying that she was too untried, and too obvious, to be selected as the
Wizard's assassin. She must be involved in a diversionary tactic, or in
taking out a possible successor or high-level ally. For tonight the Wizard

would be opening the antiroyalist, revisionist Exhibit of Struggle and
Virtue at the People's Academy of Art and Mechanics near the Palace. Yet
at the top of the Shin Road Elphaba struck out sideways, away from the
Palace district, cutting through the small, fashionable district of
Goldhaven. The homes of the filthy rich were guarded by mercenaries, and
she clopped past them on the pavements, past the stableboys out sweeping
the snow off the pavement with their brooms. She did not look up or down
or back over her shoulder. Fiyero guessed he was the more ostentatious
figure, striding in his opera cape in the snow a hundred paces behind.

At the edge of Goidhaven was perched a small bluestone jewel of a
theatre, the Lady's Mystique. In the shallow but elegant square before
it, white lights and gold and green spangles hung in profusion, looped
from streetlight to streetlight. Some holiday oratorio or other was
scheduled- he could only read SOLD OUT on the board in front-and the
doors weren't yet opened. The crowd was gathering, some vendors sold hot
chocolate in tall ceramic glasses, and a crowd of self-approving
youngsters amused themselves and bothered some elderly people by singing
a parody of an old unionist hymn of the season. The snow came down on
all, on the lights, the theatre, the crowds; it landed in the hot
chocolate, it was churned to mush and ice on the bricks.

Bravely, foolishly-without decision or choice, it felt like-Fiyero
climbed the steps of a nearby private library, to keep an eye on
Elphaba, who lost herself in the crowd. Was there to be a murder in the
theatre? Was there to be arson, the innocent sybarites roasted like
chestnuts? Was it a single mark, an appointed victim, or was it mayhem
and disaster, the more, the worse, the better?

He didn't know if he was there to prevent what she was about to do, or
to save whomever he could from the catastrophe, or to tend anyone hurt
accidentally, or even maybe just to witness it, so he could know more
about her. And love her or not love her, but know which of the two it was.

She was circulating through the crowd, as if trying to locate someone.
He believed, incredibly, that she didn't know he was there-was she so
intent on finding the right victim, and he didn't fill the bill? Could
she not feel her lover in the same open-air square with her as the wind
moved the curtains of snow?

A phalanx of Gale Forcers appeared from an alley between the theatre and
a school next door. They took up their places before the bank of glass
doors in front. hiphaba mounted the steps of an ancient wool market, a
kind of stone gazebo. Fiyero saw that she had something under her cloak.
Explosives? Some magic implement?

Did she have colleagues in the square? Were they lining themselves up
one with another? The crowd kept getting thicker, as the hour for the
oratorio drew near. Inside the glass doors, house management was busy
lining up stanchions and stringing velvet ropes to promote a genteel
entry into the hall. Nobody pushed and shoved into a public space like
the very rich, Fiyero knew.

A carriage came around the corner of a building on the far side of the
square. It couldn't come right up to the doors of the theatre, as the
crowds were too dense, but it proceeded as far as it was able. Sensing
the presence of someone with authority, the crowd drew a little still.
Could this be the elusive Wizard, on an unannounced visit? A coachman in
a teck-fur headpiece flung the door open, and reached his hand in to
assist the passenger in alighting.

Fiyero held his breath; Elphaba stiffened into petrified wood. This was
the target.

Out into the snowy street, in a tidal wave of black silk and silver
spangles, swept a huge woman; she was magisterial and august, she was
Madame Morrible, no other; even Fiyero recognized her, having met her
only once.

He saw that Elphaba knew that this was the one she must kill; she had
known this; in an instant all was dead clear. If she was caught and
captured and tried, her motivation couldn't be more wonderful-she was
merely a mad student from Madame Morrible's own Crage Hall, she carried
a grudge, she never forgot. It was too perfect.

But could Madame Morrible be involved in intrigue with the Wizard? Or
was this just a diversion, to take the mind of the authorities away from
some more urgent target?

Elphaba's cape twitched; her hand went up and down inside it, as if
priming something. Madame Morrible was growling a greeting to the crowd,
which, while not necessarily knowing who she was, appreciated the
spectacle if not the bulk of her arrival.

The Head of Crage Hall walked four steps toward the theatre, on the arm
of a tiktok minion, and Elphaba leaned a little forward from under the
wool market. Her chin was now sharply jutting out from the scarf, her
nose aiming forward; she looked as if she could snip Madame Morrible
into shreds, just using the serrated blades of her natural features. Her
hands continued to figure out things beneath the cape.

But then were thrown open the front doors of the building Madame
Morrible was walking past-not the theatre, but the adjacent school,
Madame Teastane's Female Seminary. Out the doors swarmed a cluster, a
little upper-class mob of schoolgirls. What were they doing in school on
a Lurlinemas Eve? Fiyero caught Elphaba looking wildly surprised. The
girls were six or seven, small creamy lumps of uncurdled femininity,
spooned into furry muffs and tucked into furry scarves and tipped into
boots with furry edges. They were laughing and singing, raucous and
rough as the elite adults they would become, and in their midst was a
pantomime player, someone being the Fairy Preenella. It was a man, as
the convention had it, a man done up in silly clownlike makeup, and mock
bouncing bosom, and a wig and extravagant skirts, and a straw hat, and a
huge basket with trinkets and treasures spilling out. "Oh la,
socie-tec," he fluted at Madame Morrible, "even Fairy Preenella can have
a present for the Lucky Pedestrian."

For a moment Fiyero thought the man in drag was going to pull out a
knife and kill Madame Morrible right in front of the children. But no,
espionage was organized but not that organized-this was a real accident,
a disruption. They hadn't figured on there being a school occasion this
evening, nor on a screaming flock of schoolgirls greedily tugging at an
actor in skirts and falsetto.

Fiyero turned back to look at Elphaba. Her face struggled with
disbelief. The children were in the way of whatever she was supposed to
do. They were a small unruly mob, chasing around the Head, teasing
Preenella, leaping up at him/her, grabbing for presents. The children
were the accidental context-noisy, innocent daughters of tycoons,
despots, and butcher generals.

He could see Elphaba working, he could see her hands fighting with each
other, to do it anyway, to keep from doing it-whatever it was.

Madame Momble pushed on, like a huge float in a Remembrance

Day parade, and the doors of the theatre opened for her. She passed
grandly into safety. Outside, the children danced and sang in the snow,
the crowd surged this way and that. Elphaba crumpled and sank back
against a pillar, shivering with self-loathing so violently that Fiyero
could see it from fifty yards away. He began to push toward her, devil
come what may, but by the time he reached the steps she had, for the
first and only time, managed to lose him.

The audience filed into the theatre. The children shrieked their song in
the street, awash with greed and joy. The carriage that had brought
Madame Morrible around was able to draw up in front of the theatre and
start its long wait for her to come out again. Fiyero paused, unsure, in
case there was a backup plan, in case Elphaba had something else up her
sleeve, in case the theatre exploded.

Then he began to worry that, in the few minutes of losing sight of her,
Elphaba had been rounded up by the Gale Force. Could they have whisked
her out of sight that fast? What should he do if she became one of the
disappeared?

At a clip, he headed back across town. Mercifully he found a waiting
cab, and he had the cab drive him directly to the street of warehouses
adjacent to the military garrison in the city's ninth district.


In a state of profound agitation he arrived back at Elphaba's little
eyrie atop the corn exchange. As he climbed the stairs, his bowels
turned suddenly to water, and it was only with effort he managed to make
it to the chamber pot. His insides slopped noisily, wetly out, and he
held his perspiring face in his hands. The cat was perched atop the
wardrobe, glaring down at him. Voided, washed down, and at least loosely
done up again, he tried to coax Malky with a bowl of milk. She would
have none of it.

He found a couple of dried crackers, and ate them miserably, and then
pulled on the chain to open the skylight, to help air the room. A couple
of plops of snow fell in and sat there not melting, it was that cold in
the damn place. He went to build up a fire, pulled open the iron door of
the stove.

The fire caught, then flared, and the shadows detached themselves and
moved as shadows will, but these shadows moved fast, across the room, at
him before he could reaister what they were. Excent that there

were three, or four, or five, and they were wearing black clothes, and
black char on their faces, and their heads were wrapped in colored
scarves Like the ones he had bought for Elphaba, for Sarima. On the
shoulder of One he saw the glint of a gilded epaulet: a senior member of
the Gale Force. There was a club and it beat down on him, like the kick
of a horse, Like the falling limb of a tree hit by lightning. There must
be pain, but he was too surprised to notice. That must be his blood,
squirting a ruby stain on the white cat, making it flinch. He saw its
eyes open, twin golden green moons, befitting of the season, and the cat
then scarpered through the open skylight and was lost in the snowy night.


The youngest maunt was obliged to answer the convent door if the bell
sounded during mealtime. In fact she was clearing away the remains of
pumpkin soup and rye brisks, the other maunts already wafting, in a
cerebral mood, toward their cloister chapel upstairs. She hesitated
before deciding to answer the bell-in another three minutes she too
would have been losing herself in devotions, and the bell would have
gone unheeded. She had rather get the dishes to soak, frankly. But the
seasonal cheer bullied her into charity.

She opened the huge door to find a figure crouched like a monkey in the
dark corner of the stone porch. Beyond, snow was wrinkling the facade of
the adjacent Church of Saint Glinda, making it look like a reflection in
water, only right way up. The streets were empty and a noise of choirs
came filtering out of the candle-lit church.

"What is it?" said the novice, remembering then to add, "Good
Lurlinemas, my friend."

She decided, once she saw the blood on the odd green wrists, and the
darting look in the eyes, that holiday decency required her to drag the
creature inside. But she could hear her sister maunts assembling in
their private chapel, and the mother maunt beginning to sing a prelude
in her silvery contralto. This was the novice's first big liturgical
event as a member of this community, and she didn't want to miss a
moment of it.

"Come with me, dolly," she said, and the creature-a young woman a year
or two older than she was-managed to straighten up enough to walk, or
hobble, like a cripple, like a person so malnourished that their
extensors cannot flex and their limbs look as if they are about to snap.

The novice stopped in a washroom to rinse the blood off the wrists, and
to make certain that it was indeed splattered mess from the beheading of
some hen for a holiday supper, and not a sad attempt at suicide. But the
stranger recoiled from the sight of water, and looked so deranged and
unhappy that the novice stopped. She used a dry towel instead.

The maunts were beginning antiphonal chants upstairs! How maddening! The
novice took the path of least resistance. She dragged the forlorn thing
down toward the winter salon, where the old retired biddies lived out
their lives in a haze of amnesia and the discreetly placed clumps of
marginium plants, whose sweet miasma helped mask the odors of the old
and incontinent. The crones lived in a time of their own, they couldn't
be carted upstairs to the sacred chapel anyway.

"Look, I'll sit you down here," she said to the woman. "I don't know if
you need sanctuary or food or a bath or forgiveness, whatever. But you
can stop here, warm and dry and safe and quiet. I'll come back to you
after midnight. It's the feast day, you see. It's the vigil service.
Watch and wait, and hope."

She pushed the hunted, haunted woman into a soft chair, and found a
blanket. Most of the crones were snoring away, their heads nodding on
their breastbones, dribbling softly onto bibs ornamented with green and
gold berries and leaves. A few were telling their beads. The courtyard,
open in summer, was now welled in with glass panels for the winter, so
it looked like a square fish tank in an aquarium; snow falling in it
always made them peaceful.

"Look, you can see the snow, white as the grace of the Unnamed God,"
said the novice, remembering her pastoral requirements. "Think on that,
and rest, and sleep. Here's a pillow. Here's a stool for your feet.
Upstairs we'll be singing and praising the Unnamed God. I'll pray for you."

"Don't-" said the green ghostly guest, then slumped her head against the
pillow.

"It's my pleasure to," said the novice, a bit aggressively, and fled,
just in time to catch the processional hymn.

For a while the winter salon was still. It was like a fishbowl into
which a new acquisition has been dropped. The snow moved as if done by a
machine, gently and mesmerizingly, with a soft churr. The blossoms of
the mareinium plants closed a bit in the strengthening cold of the room.
Oil lamps issued their funereal crepe ribbons into the air. On the other
side of the garden-hardly visible through the snow and the two windows-a
decrepit haunt, with a more precise grasp of the calendar than her
sisters, began to hum a saucy old pagan hymn to Lurline.

Up to the shivering figure of the newcomer came one of the elders,
inching forward in a wheeled chair. She leaned forward and sniffed. From
a cloak of plaid blanket, blue and ivory, she pawed her old hands along
the armrests. She reached out and touched Elphaba's hand.

"Well, the poor dolly is sick, the poor dolly is tired," said the
ancient thing. Her hands felt, as the novice's had done, for open wounds
on the wrists. Nothing. "Though intact, the poor dolly is in pain," she
said, as if approving. A dome of near-balding scalp came into view under
the hood of the blanket. "The poor dolly is faint, the poor dolly is
faltering," she went on. She rocked a bit and pressed Elphaba's hands
between her own, as if to warm them, but it was doubtful that her anemic
and incompetent old circulatory system could heat a stranger when it
could scarcely heat herself. Still she kept on. "The poor poppet is
failure itself," she murmured. "Happy holidays to one and all. Come my
dear, lay your breast on old Mother's bosom. Old Mother Maunt will set
things right." She couldn't quite pull Elphaba out of her position of
dreamless, sleepless grief. She could only keep Elphaba's hands tightly
clutched within her own, as a sepal sockets the furls of young petal.
"Come, my precious and all will be well. Rest in the bosom of mad Mother
Yackle. Mother Yackle will see you home."


Book 4 - In the Vinkus


The Voyage Out
--------------

1
_____
On the day the seven-year maunt was to leave, Sister Bursar took the
huge iron key from her bosom and unlocked the store chamber, and said,
"Come in." She pulled from the press three black shifts, six camisoles,
gloves, and a shawl. She also handed over the broom. Finally, for
emergencies, a basket of simples-herbs and roots, tinctures, rues,
salves and balms.

There was paper, too, though not much: a dozen pages or so, in different
shapes and thicknesses. Paper was in ever shorter supply in all of Oz.
"Make it last, make it important," advised Sister Bursar. "You're a
bright one, for all your sulks and silences." She found a pen. A pfenix
feather, known for the endurance and strength of the quill. Three pots
of black ink, sealed under knobby wristholds of wax.

Oatsie Manglehand was waiting in the ambulatory with the old Superior
Maunt. The convent was paying a decent penny for this service, and
Oatsie needed the fees. But she didn't like the look of the sullen maunt
that Sister Bursar ushered in. "This is your passenger," said the
Superior Maunt. "Her name is Sister Saint Aelphaba. She's spent many
years in solitary life and in nursing. The habit of gossip is lost. But
it's time for her to move on, and move on she will. You'll find her no
trouble."

Oatsie looked the passenger over and said, "The Grasstrail Train doesn't
promise the survival of its party, Mother. I've led two dozen trips
these past ten years or so, and there have been more casualties than I
like to admit."

"She leaves of her own free will," said the Superior Maunt. "Should she
wish to return at any point, we would take her in. She is one of us."

She didn't look one of anything to Oatsie, neither flesh nor fowl,

neither idiot nor intellectual. Sister Saint Aelphaba just stared at the
floor. Though she seemed to be about thirty, she had a sallow,
adolescent look about her.

"And there's the luggage-you can manage it?" The Superior Maunt pointed
to the small heap of supplies in the immaculate forecourt in front of
the mauntery. Then she turned to the departing maunt. "Sweet child of
the Unnamed God," said the Superior Maunt, "you go from us to conduct an
exercise in expiation. You feel there is a penalty to pay before you may
find peace. The unquestioning silence of the cloister is no longer what
you need. You are returning to yourselfi So we send you from us with our
love and with our expectations of your success. Godspeed, my good sister."

The passenger kept her eyes trained on the ground and did not answer.

The Superior Maunt sighed. "We must be off to our devotions." She peeled
a few notes from a roll of money kept in the recesses of her veils, and
handed them over to Oatsie Manglehand. "This should see you through, and
more besides."

It was a healthy amount. Oatsie stood to earn a lot from escorting this
taciturn woman through the Kells-more than from the whole rest of her
party combined. "You are too good, Mother Maunt," she said. She took the
cash with her strong hand, and made a gesture of deference with her limp
one.

"No one is too good," said the Superior Maunt, but nicely, and retired
with surprising speed behind the cloister doors. Sister Bursar said,
"You're on your own now, Sister Elphie, and may all the stars smile you
on your way!" and she disappeared as well. Oatsie went to load the
luggage and supplies in the wagon. There was a small, chunky ragamuffin
boy asleep behind the trunk. "Off with you," said Oatsie, but the boy
muttered, "I'm to go too, that's what they told me." Vv'hen Sister Saint
Aelphaba neither confirmed nor denied this plan, Oatsie began to
understand why the payment to take the green maunt away had been more
than generous.


The Cloister of Saint Glinda was located in the Shale Shallows, twelve
miles southwest of the Emerald City. It was an outpost mauntery, under

the aegis of the one in town. Sister Saint Aelphaba had spent two years
in town and five years here, according to the Mother Maunt. "You want to
be called Sister still, now that you're sprung from that holy prison?"
asked Oatsie as she clucked the reins and urged the packhorses on.

"Elphie is fine," said the passenger.

"And the boy, what's he called?"

Elphie shrugged.

The coach met the rest of the caravan a few miles on. There were four
wagons in all, and fifteen travelers. Elphie and the boy were the last
to join. Oatsie Manglehand outlined the proposed route: south along the
edge of Kellswater, west through Kumbricia's Pass, northwest through the
Thousand Year Grasslands, stopping at Kiamo Ko, and then wintering a bit
farther northwest. The Vinkus was uncivilized land, Oatsie told them,
and there were tribal groups to be wary of: the Yunamata, the Scrow, the
Arjiki. And there were animals. And spirits. They would need to stick
together. They would need to trust one another.

Elphie showed no sign of listening. She fiddled with the pfenix feather
and drew patterns in the soil between her feet, coiling shapes like
dragons writhing or smoke rising. The boy squatted eight or ten feet
away, wary and shuttered. He seemed to be her page, for he managed her
bags and attended her needs, but they did not look at each other, or
speak. Oatsie found it strange in the extreme, and hoped it didn't augur
ill.

The Grasstrail Train set off at sunset, and made only a few miles before
its first camp at a streambed. The party-mostly Gillikinese- chattered
in nervous amazement at their courage, to go so far afield from the
safety of central Oz! All for different reasons: for business, for
family needs, to pay a debt, to kill an enemy. The Vinkus was a
frontier, and the Winkies a beknighted, bloodthirsty folk who knew
little about indoor plumbing or the rules of etiquette so the party
regaled itself in song. Oatsie took part for a short time, but she knew
there was hardly one among them who wouldn't prefer to stay where they
were and avoid the depths of the Vinkus altogether. Except perhaps that
Elphie, who was keeping pretty much to herself.


They left the rich edge of Gillikin behind. The Virikus began with a
mesh of pebbles spread on brown wet soil. At night the Lizard Star
pointed the

direction: south, south along the edge of the Great Kells, to the
dangerous gap of Kumbricia's Pass. Pines and black starsaps stood up
like teeth on every embankment. By day they were welcoming, sometimes
giving shade. By night they towered, and harbored snatchowls and bats.

Elphie was often awake at night. Thought was returning to her, perhaps
expanding under the fierce openness, where the birds cried in falling
voices, and the meteors stitched omens into the sky. Sometimes she tried
to write with her pfeni.x feather; sometimes she sat and thought words
out, and didn't commit them to paper.

Life outside the cloister seemed to cloud up with such particularity-the
shape of her seven years past was already being crowded out. All that
undifferentiated time, washing terra-cotta floors without dipping her
hands in the bucket-it took hours to do a single room, but no floor was
ever cleaner. Making wine, taking in the sick, working in the infirmary
wing, which had reminded her briefly of Crage Hall. The benefit of a
uniform was that one need not struggle to be unique-how many
uniquenesses could the Unnamed God or nature create? One could sink
selflessly into the daily pattern, one could find one's way without
groping. The little changes-the red bird landing on the windowsill, and
that was spring-the leaves to rake from the terrace, and that was
fall-they were enough. Three years of absolute silence, two years of
whisper, and then, moved up (and outward) by the decision of the
Superior Maunt, two years on the ward for incurables.

There, for nine months-thought Elphie under the stars, picturing it to
herself as if telling someone else-she tended the dying, and those too
clumsy to die. She grew to see dying as a pattern, beautiful in its way.
A human form is like a leaf, it dies in a set piece unless something
interferes: first this, then that, then this. She might have gone on as
a nurse forever, arranging wrists in a pleasing pattern above starched
bedsheets, reading the nonsense words of scripture that seemed to help
so. She could manage the dying.

Then, a year ago, pale invalid Tibbett was carted to the Home for the
Incurables. He wasn't too far gone to recognize her even behind her veil
and silences. Weak, unable to shit or piss without help, his skin
falling in rags and parchment, he was better at life than she was. He
selfishly required that she be an individual, and he addressed her by her

name. He joked, he remembered stories, he criticized old friends for
abandoning him, he noticed the differences in how she moved from day to
day, how she thought. He reminded her that she did think. Under the
scrutiny of his tired frame she was re-created, against her will, as an
individual. Or nearly.

At last he died, and the Superior Maunt had said that it was time for
her to go and atone for her mistakes, though not even the Superior Maunt
knew what they were. 'When that was done?-well, she was still a young
woman, she could raise a family. Take her broom and remember:

obedience and mystery.

"You can't sleep," said Oatsie one night as Elphie sat under the stars.

But though her thoughts were rich and complicated, her words were poor,
and she merely grunted. Oatsie made a few jokes at which Elphie tried to
smile, but Oatsie laughed enough for both of them. Big, full laughs. It
made Elphie tired.

"Isn't that cook a piece of work?" said Oatsie, and told some episode
that seemed pointless, and she chortled at her own story. Elphie tried
to enjoy, tried to grin, but above her the stars grew thicker, more like
glittering fishspawn than salt; they turned on their stalks with a
cursing, grinding sound, if only she could hear it. She couldn't hear
it; Oatsie was too coarse and loud.

There was much to hate in this world, and too much to love.

Before long they came to the edge of Kellswater, a murderous slice of
water lying as if cleft from the side of a thundercloud. It was all
gray, no lights on it. "That," said Oatsie, "is why the horses don't
drink from it, nor travelers; that's why it was never tapped in
aqueducts and run to the Emerald City. It's dead water. And you thought
you'd seen it all." Still, the travelers were impressed. A lavender
heaviness arose on its western edge-the first hint of the Great Kells,
the mountains that separated the Vinkus from the rest of Oz. From here
the mountains appeared as thin as gas.

Oatsie demonstrated the use of the fog charm in the event of an attack
by a band of Yunamata hunters. "Are we going to be attacked?" asked the
boy who seemed to be Elphie's page. "I'll get 'em dead before no one
knows what's on." The fear rose up from him and caught on in

the others. "We usually do well," said Oatsie, "we just need to be
prepared. They can be friends. If we are friends."


The caravan straggled by day, four wagons keeping their distance,
accompanied by nine horses, two cows, a bull, a heifer, and various
chickens without much personality. The cook had a dog named Killyjoy who
seemed to Elphie a Makejoy instead, a panting, sniffy thing. Some people
thought for a time he might actually be a Dog, in hiding, but they gave
up that idea. "Hah," Elphie said to the others, "have you spoken to
Animals so seldom that you can't remember the difference anymore?" No,
he was just a dog, but a most glorious doggy dog, full of rages and
exaggerated devotions. Killyjoy was a mountain breed, part Linster
collie, part Lenx terrier, and maybe part wolf. His nose went up like a
butter curl, in gray-black ridges and ribs. He could not be kept from
hunting but he did not catch much either. By night, when the wagons
squared off together, the cooking fire within, the animals just nearby,
without, and the singing began at last, Killyjoy hid under the wagon.

Oatsie heard the boy tell the dog his name. "I'm Liir," said the boy.

"You can be my dog, sort of." She had to smile. The fat child was not
good at making friends, and a lonely child should have a dog.


Kdlswater slipped back, out of sight. Some felt safer away from it.
Almost hourly the Great Kells rose and thickened, the color now like the
brown rind of a butterdew melon. Still the track meandered along the
valley, the Vinkus River on its right, the mountains beyond it. Oatsie
knew several places to ford, but they weren't clearly marked. 'While
they searched, Killyjoy caught a valley grite at last. He bled and
whined, and was treated for poison. Liir let him ride in his arms, which
made Elphie faintly jealous. She was almost amused to note in herself
such a turgid, old-fashioned feeling as jealousy.

The cook was angry that Killyjoy preferred someone else's company more
than his-he shook his ladle overhead as if summoning the wrath of angel
chefs among the stars. Elphie thought of him as a butcher cook, as he
seemed to have no scruples about shooting rabbits and eating them. "How
do you know they're not Rabbits?" she said, and she wouldn't touch a bite.

"Quiet, you, or I'll cook that little boy instead," he answered.

She tried to raise with Oatsie the notion of firing the cook, but Oatsie
would not listen. "We're coming in to Kumbricia's Pass," she said, "my
mind is on other matters."

They couldn't help but feel the unsettling eroticism of the landscape.
From the eastern approach, the Kumbricia Pass looked like a woman lying
on her back, her legs spread apart, welcoming them.

Up in the slopes, the pine boughs shaded the sun, the wild pears tangled
their twisted branches together as if wrestling. A sudden dampness, a
new private climate-the bark ran wet, the air sank heavily against the
skin like half-laundered toweling. Once inside the forest, the travelers
could not see the hills. Everything smelled of ferns and fiddle-greens.
And on the shores of a small lake stood a dead tree. It harbored a
community of bees, at their work of chamber music and honey.

"I want to take them with us," said Elphie. "I'll talk to them and see
if they'll come."

There had been bees in the kitchen garden at Crage Hall, and again at
the Cloister of Saint Glinda in the Shale Shallows. Elphie was entranced
by them. But Liir was terrified, and the cook threatened to disappear
and leave the group traumatized by an inability to do a really topnotch
bechamel sauce in the wilderness. Discussion was waged. An old man in
the party, heading westward to die because of some midnight vision,
ventured as to how a little honey would improve the tasteless
sparrowleaf tea. A Glikkun mail-order bride agreed. Oatsie, of
sentimental enthusiasms when least expected, voted for honey. So Elphie
climbed the tree and talked to the bees, and they came along in a swarm,
but most travelers stayed in the other wagons, suddenly scared of every
fleck of dust that flitted against the skin.

They sent out a request, using drums and mist, to attract the attention
of a hired rafiqi, for caravans were not allowed to move through the
lands of different Vinkus tribes without a guide to negotiate
permissions and fees. Bored one evening, and responding to the gloom,
the travelers fell to discussing the legend of the Kumbric Witch. Who
comes first, the Fairy Queen Lurline or the Kumbric Witch?

Igo, the sick old man, quoted the Oziad, and reminded them all of how
creation worked: the Dragon of Time created the sun and the moon,

and Lurline cursed them and said that their children wouldn't know their
own parents, and then the Kumbric Witch came along and the flood, the
battle, the spilling of evil in the world.

Oatsie Manglehand disagreed. She said, "You old fools, the Oziad is just
a frilly, romantic poem of older, harsher legends. What lives in folk
memory is truer than how some artsy poet says it. In folk memory evil
always predates good."

"Can this be true?" asked Igo, with interest.

"Surely there is the handful of nursery marchen that start, 'Once in the
middle of a forest lived an old witch' or 'The devil was out walking one
day and met a child," said Oatsie, who was showing that she had some
education as well as grit. "To the grim poor there need be no pour quoi
tale about where evil arises; it just arises; it always is. One never
learns how the witch became wicked, or whether that was the right choice
for her-is it ever the right choice? Does the devil ever struggle to be
good again, or if so is he not a devil? It is at the very least a
question of definitions."

"It certainly is true that tales of the Kumbric Witch abound," agreed
Igo. "Every other witch is just a shadow, a daughter, a sister, a
decadent descendant; the Kumbric Witch is the model further back than
which it seems impossible to go."

Elphie remembered the ambiguous scroll painting of the Kumbric Witch-was
it she?-found in the library of Three Queens, that summer long ago:
standing in shiny shoes, straddling a continent, nursing or choking a beast.

"I don't believe in the Kumbric Witch, even in Kumbricia's Pass,"
boasted the cook.

"You don't believe in Rabbits either," snarled Elphie, suddenly annoyed.
"The question is, does the Kumbric Witch believe in you?"

"Temper," sang out Oatsie, and turned it into a singalong song. Elphie
stamped away. This was too much like her childhood, discussions with her
father and Nessarose about where evil begins. As if one could ever know!
Her father used to orchestrate proofs about evil as a way of persuading
his flock to convert. Elphie had come to think, back in Shiz, that as
women wore cologne, men wore proofs: to secure their own sense of
themselves, and thus to be attractive. But surely evil was beyond proof,
just as the Kumbric Witch was beyond the grasp of knowable history?


2
______
The rafiqi arrived, a thin, balding man with battle scars. There might
be trouble from the Yunamata this year, he told them. "The caravan comes
after a season of dirty forays by cavalry from the Emerald City. Winkie
roundup," he complained. It wasn't clear if he was talking about a local
argument over a drunken slight to a Vinkus maiden or about a slave trade
and resettlement camps.

The camp was broken, the lake left behind, and the silent forest
continued for a half a day. Sunlight speared through the canopy from
time to time, but it was a thin, egg yolk light, and seemed always to be
off to the side, never spotlighting down on the path ahead. It was
eerie, as if Kumbricia herself were moving along beside them, hidden,
unbidden, passing from tree to tree, sliding behind rocks, waiting in
shadowy depths, watching and listening. The ailing old man wailed
nasally, and prayed to emerge from this mystery wood before he died, or
his spirit might never find its way out. The boy wept like a girl. The
cook wrung the neck of a chicken.

Even the bees stopped humming.

In the middle of the night the cook disappeared. There was consternation
among all except Elphie, who didn't care. Was it a kidnapping, or a
sleepwalking episode, or a suicide? Were the angry Yunamata near, and
watching? Was it Kumbricia herself taking revenge on them for discussing
her so glibly? There were many opinions, and the breakfast eggs were
runny and inedible.

Killyjoy did not notice the cook's disappearance. He snuggled, grinning
in his coma-sleep, closer to Liir.



The bees went into some sort of mysterious hibernation inside the joint
of tree trunk brought along to make them happy. Killyjoy, still smarting
from grite poison, slept twenty-two hours a day. The travelers, afraid
of being overheard, stopped talking altogether.

Toward the evening the pines at last began to thin, and the forest to
shift to stag-head oak, which with its broader branches let in more of
the sky-a pasty yellow sky, but at last a sky-and then there was a cliff
edge. They had climbed higher than anyone had quite realized; beneath and

beyond stretched the rest of Kumbricia's Pass, a journey of four or five
days. Beyond that was the beginning of the Thousand Year Grasslands.

No one was sorry for the light and room that the sky afforded. Even
Elphie felt her heart lift, unexpectedly.


In the middle of the night the Yunamata arrived. They brought gifts of
dried fruit and sang tribal songs, and made those who would dance get up
and dance. The travelers were more terrified of their hospitality than
of the attack that they had expected.

As Elphie thought about it, the Yunamata seemed soft, compliant folk,
only as fearful and fearless as schoolgirls-at least that was all they
showed. They were cavorting, opinionated; they reminded her of the
Quadlings with whom she had grown up. Perhaps ethnically they were
distant cousins. Long lashes. Narrow elbows. Babylike supple wrists.
Oblong heads and thin concentrated lips-even with their foreign tongue
they made her feel at home.

The Yunamata left in the morning, complaining rudely about the runniness
of the breakfast eggs. The rafiqi said that the Yunamata would make no
further trouble. Even he seemed disappointed, as if his employment
hadn't been required.

There was no word about the cook. The Yunamata didn't seem to know
anything about him.


As the caravan continued its descent, the sky opened up again, brisk and
autumnal, wide as remorse. From thcrc to thcrc!-the eye could hardly
take it in. The plain below, compared to the mountains, seemed level as
a lake. The wind made strokes across it, as if spelling things in a
language of curls and stripes. No wildlife was visible from this
distance, though there were tribal fires here and there. Kumbricia's
Pass was left behind, or nearly.

Then a Yunamata messenger came on swift leathery feet, arriving from the
Pass behind them, to share the news that a body had been found at the
base of a cliff. Perhaps it was the cook; it was thought to be a man,
but the surface of the corpse was so swollen with lesions that the
particulars were lost. "It was the bees," said someone, full of rage.

"Oh, was it?" came Elphie's calm voice. "They've been asleep for so
long. Wouldn't there have been screams if they'd attacked a man in the

middle of the night? Did the bees sting his throat first, to swell his
vocal cords shut? Very talented bees, those."

"It was the bees," was the mutter, and the implication was clear. You too.

"Oh, I forgot the size of the human imagination," Elphie said meanly.
"How very large it is, after all."

But she wasn't upset, not really. For Killyjoy was back to himself, at
last, and the bees woke up too. Perhaps the high altitudes at the top of
the Kumbricia Pass had given them such sleep. Elphie began to prefer
their company to the rest of the travelers. As they woke up, coming down
from the heights, she felt herself more and more awake, too.


The rafiqi pointed out on the horizon several mounding coils of smoke.
At first the travelers guessed they were windstorms, but Oatsie soothed
them and alarmed them: It was evening fires for a large encampment. S
crow. It was autumn hunting season, though nothing had been seen of any
game bigger than a hare or a grass fox (its brush a wild swipe of bronze
on melting golden meadow, its feet in black stockings like a serving
maid's). Killyjoy was ecstatic with the possibilities of encounter; he
could hardly bear to rest at night. Even in his dreams he twitched with
the hunt.

The travelers feared the Scrow more than they had the Yunamata. The
rafiqi did not say much to allay their fears. He was more tentative than
it had first seemed; perhaps the job of negotiating among suspicious
peoples required caution. Liir idolized him hopelessly, after only a few
days of travel. Elphie thought: Such silly things, children-and so
embarrassing-because they keep changing themselves out of shame, out of
a need to be loved or something. While animals are born who they are,
accept it, and that is that. They live with greater peace than people do.

She felt in herself a jolt of pleasurable expectation over the thought
of approaching the Scrow. Along with so much else, she had forgotten
what pleasurable expectation was. As night fell, everyone seemed more
alert, out of fear and excitement. The skies throbbed with turquoise,
even at midnight. Starlight and comet tails burned the tips of endless
grass below into a hammered silver. Like thousands of tapers in the
chapel, just blown out but still glowing.

If one could drown in the grass, thought Elphie, it might be the best
way to die.


3
______
It was noon when the caravan pulled up to the edge of the Scrow camp. A
committee of Scrow had ridden to their domestic margin, where the
sand-colored tents petered out into untrampled grass-men and women alike
sat on horseback, about seven or eight of them, in blue ribbons and
ivory bangles. Also, obviously senior, was a huge slab of an old woman
carried in a palanquin of some sort, its frame all hung round with
tambours and clinking amulets and gauzy veils. She let the rafiqi and
the tribal paladins trade compliments or insults. After a while she
grunted a direction and her curtains were withdrawn so she could see.
She had an overhung lip, so large that it doubled back on itself like an
upside-down spout on a pitcher. Her eyes were ringed with kohl. On her
shoulders sat two dyspeptic-looking crows. Their feet were shackled in
gold links and attached to loops in her ornamental collar, into which
the old woman had dribbled traces of the fruit she had been eating as
she waited. Her shoulders were speckled with crow droppings.

"The Princess Nastoya," said the rafiqi at last.

She was the filthiest, least-educated princess anyone had ever seen, yet
she had some dignity; even the most ardent democrat among the travelers
genuflected. She laughed raucously. Then she bade her bearers lug her
away to someplace less tedious.

The Scrow camp was arranged in concentric circles, with the Princess's
tent in the middle, prettied up with extensions of faded striped
baldaquins on all sides. It was a little airy palace in silks and cotton
muslin. Her advisors and concubine-husbands seemed to live in the
nearest circle (and a scrawny lot the husbands were, thought Elphie, but
perhaps they were chosen for timidity and scrawniness, to make her seem
ever the larger). Beyond the Princess's settlement ranged four hundred
tents, which meant maybe a thousand people altogether. A thousand
humans, with their poached-salmon skin, their moistly protruding eyes
(but sensitive, in lowered gazes, to avoid being met), their handsome
generous noses, and big buttocks, and wide rolling hips, men and women
alike.

Most of the caravan travelers stayed glued to the doors of their wag.
ons, imagining crime just beyond the nearest tent. But Elphie found it
impossible to keep still, with all this newness beckoning. When Elphie
walked, there were gasps, and the adults shyly retreated out of her
path. But only ten minutes had passed before there were sixty children
in a noisy crowd, following behind, running ahead, like a cloud of midges.

The rafiqi advised caution, advised return to the camp; but childhood in
the Quadling badlands had made Elphaba not only bold, but curious. There
were more ways to live than the ones given by one's superiors.

After the evening meal, a delegation of erect old Scrow dignitaries
approached the Grasstrail Train and entered into a lengthy palaver with
the rafiqi. In the end, the rafiqi translated the message: a small band
was invited-requested-(ordered?)-to the Scrow shrine. It would take an
hour by camel. For her sin of skin color, presumably, or possibly for
having had the nerve to take a solitary stroll through the Scrow tent
city, Elphie was told to join Oatsie, the rafiqi, Igo for his venerable
age, and one of the financial adventurers-named Pinchweed, or maybe that
was just a nasty nickname.

By the light of sallowwood torches, the camels, in glittering
caparisons, lurched and lumbered on a worn track. It was like going up
and down a staircase at the same time. Elphie sat above the grass, a
vantage point over the great ffickering surface. Although the ocean was
only an idea sprung out of mythology, she could almost see where it came
from-there were small grasshawks launching themselves like fish leaping
out of the spume, nipping at the fireflies, pocketing them, then falling
back in a dry splash. Bats passed, making a guttering, sputtering sound
that ended in an extinguishing swoop. The plain itself seemed to bring
forth night color: now a heliotrope, now a bronzy green, now a dun color
skeined through with red and silver. The moon rose, an opalescent
goddess tipping light from her harsh maternal scimitar. Nothing more
need have happened; it seemed enough to Elphaba to find herself capable
of such a weird ecstatic response to soft color and safe space. But no,
on-on.

Eventually Elphie noticed a plantation of trees, carefully tended in
this devastating openness. First a stand of scrub spruce, contorted by
the winds into gnarled figures of split bark and hissing needles-and the
pagan odor of sap. Beyond, a rise of higher hedges, then, yet higher trees.

It was the circular pattern of the Scrow encampment again. The party
passed into it in silence, as through a maze, along curving corridors of
whispering brush, moving from outer to inner circles lit by oil lamps
hammered to carven posts.

Within, at the center, was the Princess Nastoya girded in a native
costume of leather and grass made all the more effective by a length of
striped purple and white toweling she must have bargained from some
traveler or other. She stood, distracted and breathing heavily, leaning
on stout walking sticks; around her, sarsen stones like gapped teeth
resembled a stone cage through which she could hardly pass, given her bulk.

The guests joined the hosts in eating, drinking, and smoking on a pipe
with a bowl carved like a crow's head. Crows ranged all around on the
tops of the sarsens, twenty, thirty, forty? Elphie's head spun, the moon
rose, the plain at night, invisible from the secret garden of the green
maze, wheeled about like a child's top. She could almost hear the
spinning. The Scrow elders chanted in a drone.

When the drone died out, the Princess Nastoya raised her head.

The huge wattles of old flesh beneath her small chin wobbled. Her
toweling fell to the ground. She was naked and old and strong; what had
seemed like boredom was revealed as patience, memory, control. She shook
the very hair off her head and it uncoiled down her back and
disappeared. Her feet moved massively, as if seeking the best purchase,
like columns, like pillars of stone. She dropped her arms forward and
her back was a dome; still her head was up, her eyes the brighter, her
nose working mightily; she was an Elephant.

An Elephant goddess, Elphie thought, her mind recoiling in terror and
delight, but the Princess Nastoya said, "No." She spoke through the
rafiqi still; he had obviously seen this before, though with the alcohol
he stuttered and had to search for words.

One by one she asked the intentions of the travelers.

"Money and commerce," said Pinchweed, shocked into honesty:

money and commerce and pillage and plunder at whatever cost.

"A place to die where I can rest, and my spirit go abroad," ventured Igo.

"Safety and movement, out of harm's way," said Oatsie spunkily, by which
it was clear she meant: out of men's way.

The rafiqi indicated that Elphie's own answer was still needed.

In the presence of such an Animal, Elphie could not stay aloof. So she
spoke it as best as she could. "To retire from the world after making
sure of the safety of the survivors of my lover. To face his widow,
Sarima, in guilt and responsibility, and then to remove myself from the
darkening world."

The Elephant told the others, except the rafiqi, to leave.

The Elephant raised her trunk and sniffed the wind. Her rheumy old eyes
blinked slowly and her ears moved back and forth, raking the air for
nuance. She pissed hugely in a steaming flow, with dignity and
nonchalance, eyes firmly latched on Elphaba.

Through the rafiqi, the Elephant then said, "Daughter of the dragon, I
too am under a spell. I know how it may be broken-but I choose to live
as a changeling. An Elephant is a hunted thing in these times. The Scrow
approve of me. They have worshipped elephants from the time before
language, the time before history began. They know I am not a goddess.
They know I am a beast who chooses magical incarceration as a human over
the dangerous liberty of my own powerful form.

"When the times are a crucible, when the air is full of crisis," she
said, "those who are the most themselves are the victims."

Elphie could only look, she could not speak.

"But the choice to save yourself can itself be deadly," said the
Princess Nastoya.

Elphie nodded, looked away, looked back.

"I will give you three crows as your familiars," said the Princess. "You
are in hiding as a witch now. That is your guise." She spoke a word to
the crows, and three mangy, evil-looking things came and waited nearby.

"A witch?" Elphaba said. What her father would think! "Hiding from what?"

"We have the same enemy," replied the Princess. "We are both at risk. If
you need help send the crows. If I am still alive, as an old matriarch
monarch, or as a free Elephant, I'll come to your aid."

"Why?" asked Elphie.

"Because no retreat from the world can mask what is in your face," she
answered.

The Princess said more. It had been years-more than a decade- since
Elphie had been able to talk to an Animal. Who, Elphie asked the
Princess, had enchanted her? But the Princess Nastoya wouldn't say-in
part as self-protection, for the death of the enchanter could sometimes
mean the revocation of binding spells, and her curse was her safety.

"But is life worth living in the wrong form?" said Elphie.

"The interior doesn't change," she answered, "except by selfinvolvement.
Of which be not afraid, and also beware."

"I have no interior," said Elphaba.

"Something told those bees to kill the cook," said the Princess Nastoya,
with a glitter in her eye. Elphaba felt herself go pale.

"I didii't!" she said. "No, it couldn't have been me! And how did you know?"

"You did, on some level. You are a strong woman. And I can hear bees,
you know. My ears are keen."

"I would like to stay here with you," said Elphaba. "Life has been very
hard. If you can hear me when I cannot hear myself-something the
Superior Maunt could never do-you could help me do no harm in this
world. That's all I want-to do no harm."

"By your own admission, you have a job to do," said the Princess. She
curled her trunk around Elphaba's face, feeling its contours and truths.
"Go and do it."

"May I return to you?" asked Elphie.

But the Princess wouldn't answer. She was tiring-she was an old old
thing even for an Elephant. Her trunk went back and forth like a
pendulum on a clock. Then the great nose-hand came forward and set
itself with wonderful weight and precision on Elphaba's shoulders, and
curled a bit around her neck. "Listen to me, sister," she said.
"Remember this:

Nothing is written in the stars. Not these stars, nor any others. No one
controls your destiny."

Elphaba could not answer, so shocked was she at the touch. She backed
away when dismissed, her mind all but out of her.

Then the return on camels across the shuddering colors of night grass:
hypnotic, vague, and distressing.

Yet there was blessing in this night. Elphaba had forgotten blessing,
too-like so much else.


4
______
They left the Scrow encampment and the Princess Nastoya behind. The
Grasstrail Train moved in a circle north, now, a wide arch.

Igo died, and was buried in a sandy mound. "Give his spirit movement and
flight," said Elphie at the ceremony.


The rafiqi admitted later that he had thought one of the guests of the
command meeting with the Princess Nastoya was to be sacrfficed in a
ritual slaughter. It had happened before. The Princess, though coping
with her dilemma, was not above a sense of revenge. It was the honesty
of Pinchweed that saved him, as he was the obvious choice. Or perhaps
Igo wore the prospect of his death closer to the surface than humans
could see, and the Elephant took pity.


The crows were annoying; they pestered the bees, shat all over the
wagon, teased Killyjoy. The Glikkun, Raraynee, stopped at a well, met
her isolated widower husband-to-be, and left the Grasstrail Train. The
toothless new husband already had six motherless children, and they took
to Raraynee like orphaned ducklings behind a farm dog. There were only
ten travelers left.

"Now we're entering Atjiki tribal lands," said the rafiqi.


The first Arjiki band approached a few days later. They wore nothing so
splendid as what Fiyero had worn, in the way of blue markings-these were
nomads, shepherds, rounding up the sheep from the western foothills of
the Great Kells for their annual counting and, it seemed, sale to the
East. Still, just the handsome look of them ripped Elphie's heart into
pieces. Their wildness. Their otherness. This may be a punishment to the
hour of my death, she thought.

The Grasstrail Train by now was down to only two wagons: in one, the
rafiqi, Oatsie, Liir the boy, Pinchweed the entrepreneur, and a
Gillikinese mechanic named Kowpp. In the other, Elphie herself, and the
bees, the crows, and Killyjoy. Already she had, it seemed, been accepted
as a witch. It was not an entirely unlikable disguise.

Kiamo Ko was just a week away.

The Grasstrail Train turned eastward, into the steel gray passes of the
steep Great Kells. Winter was almost here, and the last travelers were
grateful that the snows had held off. Oatsie intended to stop the winter
in an Arjiki camp some twenty miles on. In the spring she would head
back to the Emerald City, making the northern route through Ugabu, and
the Pertha Hills of Gillikin. Elphie thought of sending a note to
Glinda, if after all these years she was still there-but, being unable
to decide yes, she decided no.


"Tomorrow," said Oatsie, "we'll see Kiamo Ko. The mountain stronghold of
the ruling clan of the Arjikis. Are you ready, Sister Elphie?"

She was teasing, and Elphie didn't like it. "I am no longer a sister, I
am a witch," she said, and tried to think poisonous thoughts at Oatsje.
But Oatsie was a stronger person than the cook, apparently, for she just
laughed and went on her way.

The Grasstrail Train stopped on the side of a small tarn. The others
said its water was refreshing, though Icy cold; Elphie didn't know or
care about that. But in the middle was an island-a tiny thing, the size
of a mattress, sprouting one leafless tree like an umbrella that has
lost its fabric.

Before Elphaba could quite make it out-the evening light came early at
this time of year, and even earlier in the mountains-Killyjoy had
plunged feverishly into the water, and splashed and swum his way to the
island, intent on some small movement or interesting scent he had picked
up. He ferreted in the sedge, and then clamped his teeth-the most
woiflike of his features-gently around the skull of a small beast in the
grass.

Elphie couldn't see but it looked like a baby.

Oatsie screamed, Liir quivered like a blob of jelly, Killyjoy released
his grip, but only to get a further hold; he was drooling over the scalp
of the thing he had caught.

There was no way to go through the water-that would be death- But her
feet went Out anyway- They hit the water hard, the water hit hard back-
The water turned to ice as she ran-foot by foot of ice under foot

by foot of hurry. A silvering plate formed instantly, cantilevering
forward, making a cold safe bridge to the island-

Where Killyjoy could be scolded, and the baby saved, though she hadn't
dared hope she could be in time. She pried Killyjoy's jaws apart, and
scooped up the thing. It shivered in terror and the cold. Its bright
black eyes were alert and watching, ready to upbraid or condemn or love,
same as any capable adult thing.

The others were surprised to see it, as surprised as they'd been to see
the ice form, perhaps by some magic spell left on the tarn from some
passing wizard or witch. It was a small monkey-of the variety called the
snow monkey. A baby abandoned by its mother and its tribe, or maybe
separated by accident?

It didn't think much of Killyjoy but it liked the warmth of the wagon.


They pitched their camp halfway up the perilous slope to Kiamo Ko. The
castle rose in steep black angles out of black rock. Elphie could see it
perched above them like an eagle with folded wings; its conical-roofed
towers, its battlements and bartizans, its portcullis and arrow-slit
windows-they all belied its original intention as the head of a
waterworks. Below it wound a powerful tributary of the Vinkus River on
which the Ozma Regent once had meant to build a dam and channel water
into the center of Oz-back when the droughts were their most
threatening. Fiyero's father had taken this stronghold by siege and
storm and made it the seat of the Arjiki princes, before dying and
leaving the clan leadership to his only son, if Elphaba remembered rightly.

The small luggage was packed, the bees hummed (their melodies ever more
amusing as she listened, week by week), Killyjoy was still sulking over
being denied the kill, the crows sensed that a change was coming and
wouldn't eat dinner. The monkey, who was called Chistery because of the
sound he made, chittered and chattered now that he was warm and safe.

Around the campfire good-byes were spoken, a few toasts, even a few
regrets. The sky was blacker than it had been before: perhaps it was the
contrast of the whiteness of snowy peaks all around. Liir showed up with
a parcel of clothing and some sort of musical instrument, and said
good-byes too.

"Oh, so you're stopping here, are you?" said Elphie.

"Yes," he said, "with you."

"With the crows, with the monkey, with the bees, with the dog, and with
the Witch?" she said. "With me?"

"Where else can I go?" he asked.

"I'm sure I don't know," she answered.

"I can take care of the dog," he said calmly. "I can collect the honey
for you."

"It makes no difference to me," she said.

"All tight," he said, and so Liir prepared to enter his father's house.


The Jasper Gates of Kiamo Ko
----------------------------

1
_____
Sarima," said her youngest sister, "wake up. Naptime's over. We have

a houseguest at supper, and I need to know if we have to kill a hen.

There are so few left, and what we give the traveler we miss all winter in

eggs. . . What do you think?"

The Dowager Princess of the Arjikis groaned. "Details, details," she
said, "can't I train you to figure out anything for yourself?"

"Very well," snapped the sister, "I shall decide, and thenyou can go
without your morning egg when we're one short."

"Oh Six, don't mind me," said Sarima, "it's just that I'm scarcely
awake. Who is it? Some patriarch with bad breath, who plans to bore us
with tales of the hunting he did fifty years ago? Why do we allow it?"

"It's a woman-more or less," said Six.

"Now that's uncalled for," said Sarima, sitting up. "We are none of us
the blushing nymphs we once were, Six." From across the room she saw
herself reflected in the wardrobe glass: pale as milk pudding, her still
pretty face nestled in the puddles of fat that fell according to the
laws of gravity. "Just because you're the youngest, Six, and can still
locate your waist, there's no need to be unkind."

Six pouted. "Well, it's just a woman, then: so chicken or no? Tell me
now so Four can hack off its head and get to plucking, or we won't eat
before midnight."

"We'll have fruit and cheese and bread and fish. Is there fish in the
fishwell, I suppose?" Yes, there was. Six turned to go, but remembered
to say, "I brought you a glass of sweet tea, it's there on your vanity."

"Bless you. Now tell me, without sarcasm if you please, what's our guest
like, really?"

"Green as sin, thin and crooked, older than any of us. Dressed in black
like an old maunt-but not all that old. I'd guess about, oh, thirty,
thirty-two? She won't give her name."

"Green? How divine," said SarIma.

"Divine isn't the word that comes to mind," said Six.

"You don't mean green with jealousy-you mean actually green?"

"Maybe it's from jealousy, I could not say, but she is surely green.
Genuine grass green."

"Oh la. Well, I'll wear white tonight so as not to clash. Is she alone?"

"She came in with the caravan we saw down in the valley yesterday. She
stopped here with a little company of beasts-a wolfdog, a hive of bees,
a youth, some crows, and a baby monkey."

"What'll she do with all of them in the mountains in winter?"

"Ask her yourself." Six wrinkled her nose. "She made me shudder."

"Half-set gelatin makesyou shudder. When's dinner tonight?"

"Seven chimes and a half. She turns my stomach."

Six left, having run out of expressions of disgust, and Sarima had her
tea in bed until her bladder complained. Six had banked up the fire and
drawn the curtains, but Sarima pulled them back to look down into the
courtyard. Kiamo Ko boasted corner turrets and towers, built on massive
circular salients thrusting upward from the stone of the mountain
itself. After the Arjiki clan had wrested the building from the
waterworks commission, they had added toothy crenellations for defense.
Despite the reworkings, the plan of the house was still simple. It was
built in the general shape of a U, a central hall with two long narrow
wings thrusting forward around a steeply pitched yard. When it rained,
the water churned over the cobbles, and slipped out under the carved
gates of iron oak and jasper panels, past the sickly cluster of village
houses nestled up against the castle's outside walls. At this hour the
courtyard was charcoal gray. Cold and filthy with scraps of hay and bits
of leaf flying in the wind. There was a light in the old cobbler's shed,
and smoke spinning from the chimney that badly wanted repointing-like
everything else in this decaying manse. Sarima was glad the guest hadn't
been shown into the house proper. As Dowager Princess of the Arjikis,
she enjoyed the privilege of welcoming a traveler into the private
chambers of Kiamo Ko.

After bathing, snc urcsscu in a wniic snut won wniic piping, and put on
the beautiful torque that had arrived, like a message from the Other
Land, from her dear departed husband several months after the Incident.
Out of habit Sarima shed a few tears admiring herself within the flat
embrace of its jeweled, segmented collar. If it was too dressy for this
itinerant, Sarima could always drape a napkin over it. But she would
still know it was there. Even before her tears had dried she was
humming, looking forward to the novelty of a guest.

She peeped in on the children before going down. They were jumpy;
strangers always did that to them. Irji and Manek, twelve and eleven,
were almost old enough to want to bust out of this nest of venomous
doves. Irji was soft and cried a lot, but Manek was a little bantam,
always had been. If she let them go off to the Grasslands with the clan,
in the summer migration, they both might have their throats slit-there
were too many clansmen to claim leadership for themselves or their sons.
So Sarima had kept her boys near.

Her daughter, Nor, long-legged and thumb-sucking at nine years old,
still needed a lap to crawl into before going to sleep. Dressed for the
meal, Sarima was inclined to forbid it, but relented. Nor had a delicate
lisp and she said wunning in the wain for running in the rain. She
befriended stones and candles and blades of grass that grew against all
logic in the cracks of the coping stones around the windows. She sighed
and rubbed her face against the torque and said, "There's a boy too,
Mama. We played with him in the mill yard."

"What's he like? Is he green too?"

"Nah. He's all right. He's a big baby-fat and strong, and Manek was
throwing stones at him to see how far they would bounce off him. He let
him do it. Maybe if you're so fat it doesn't hurt?"

"I doubt it. What's his name?"

"Liir. Isn't that a queer name?"

"It sounds foreign. And his mother?"

"I don't know her name and I don't think she's his mother. He wouldn't
say when we asked. Irji said he must be a bastard. Liir said he didn't
care. He's nice." She moved her right thumb to her mouth, and with her
left hand felt the cloth of Sarima's gown just below the torque, until
she found a nipple, and she ran her thumb over it lovingly as if it

- white

were a small pet. "Manek made him pull down his trousers so we could
make sure his thing wasn't green."

Sarima disapproved-on the grounds of hospitality if nothing else-but was
compelled to ask, "And what did you see?"

"Oh wellyou know." Nor turned her head into her mother's neck, and then
sneezed from the powder with which Sarima kept her chins from chafing.
"Stupid-looking boy's thing. Smaller than Manek and Irji. But not green.
I was so bored I didn't look much."

"Neither would I. That was very rude."

"I didn't make him do it. Manek did!"

"Well, no more of that. Now let's have a story before sleeping. I've got
to go down soon, so a short one. What do you want to hear, my little one?"

"I want to hear the story of the Witch and the fox babies."

With less drama than usual Sarima rattled through the tale of how the
three fox babies were kidnapped and caged and fed to fatness, in
preparation for a cheese-and-foxling casserole, and how the Witch went
to get fire from the sun to cook them. But when the Witch came back to
her cave, exhausted and in possession of father flame, the foxlings
outwitted her by singing a lullaby to make her sleep. When the Witch's
arm fell, the flame from the sun burned the door off the cage, and out
the foxlings ran. Then they howled down old mother moon to come and
stand as an unmovable door in the entrance of the cave. Sarima ended
with the traditional back-and-forth. "And there the wicked old Witch
stayed, for a good long time."

"Did she ever come out?" asked Nor, doing her line from an almost
hypnagogic state.

"Not yet," said Sarima, kissing and biting her daughter on the wrist,
which made them both giggle, and then lights out.

The stairs from Sarima's private apartment ran without railings down
into the castle keep, hugging first one wall and then, after the corner,
another. She descended the first flight full of grace and
self-possession, her white skirts billowing, her torque a yoke of soft
colors and precious metals, her face a careful composition of welcome.

At the landing she saw the traveler, sitting on a bench in an alcove,
looking up at her.

She made it down the second ffight to the flagstoned level, aware of

the cynicism that seethed beneath her loyal remembrance of Fiyero, aware
of her overbite; of her lost prettiness; of her weight; of the silliness
of being the doyenne over nothing but irritating children and backbiting
younger sisters; of the thin pretense of authority that scarcely masked
her fear of the present, the future, and even the past.

"How do you do," she managed.

"You are Sarima," said the woman, standing, her stalactite of chin
thrust forward like a rotted swede.

"Likely to be!" she said, glad of the torque; it seemed like a shield
now, to protect her heart from being punctured by that chin. "Greetings
to you, my friend. Yes, I am Sarima, mistress of Kiamo Ko. Where do you
come from, and how are you called?"

"I come from the back of the wind," said the woman, "and I have given up
my name so often I don't like to bring it out again for you."

"Well, you are welcome here," said Sarima as smoothly as she could, "but
if we have nothing else to call you by, you will have to be Auntie. Will
you come in to dine? We'll be serving out soon."

"I won't eat until we speak," said the guest. "Not under your roof in
false pretenses for one night; I'd rather lie at the bottom of a lake.
Sarima, I know who you are. I went to school with your husband. I've
known about you for a dozen years or so."

"Of course," said Sarima then, things clicking. The old, treasured
details of her husband's life came rushing up. "Of course Fiyero talked
of you-and of your sister, Nessie, right? Nessarose. And of the
glamorous Glinda, with whom I think he was a little in love, and the
playful inverted boys, and Avaric, and solid old Boq! I had wondered if
that happy time of his life was always to be self-contained, always his
and never mine-you are good to have come to call. I should have liked a
season or two at Shiz, but I didn't have the brains, I fear, nor my
family the money. I would have remembered you in a minute, well, the
color of your skin, there's nothing like it, is there? Or am I too
provincial?"

"No, it's unique," said the guest. "Before we say ten sentences of
polite nonsense to each other, I have to tell you something, Sarima. I
think I was the cause of Fiyero's death-"

"Well, you're not the only one," interrupted Sarima, "it's a national
pastime out here, blaming oneself for the death of a prince. An opportu

nity for public grieving and atonement, which I secretly believe people
enjoy just a little bit."

The guest twisted her fingers, as if to pry open a space for herself in
Sarima's opinions. "I can tell you how, I want to tell you-"

"Not unless I want to hear it, which is my prerogative. This is my house
and I choose to hear what I want."

"You must hear it, so that I can be forgiven," said the woman, turning
her shoulders this way and that, almost as if she were a beast of burden
with an invisible yoke on her.

Sarima did not like to be ambushed in her own home. Time enough to
consider these sudden implications. When she felt up to it. And not
until. She reminded herself that she was in charge. And thus she could
afford to be kind.

"If I remember rightly," said Sarima-her mind was racing with
memory-"you're the one, Fiyero talked of you, of course-Elphaba, that's
it-you're the one who didn't believe in the soul. I remember that much,
so what's to forgive, dearie? I know you're travel weary-it's impossible
to get here without being travel weary-and you need a good hot meal and
a few nights of sleep, and we'll chat some morning next week?"

Sarima linked her arm with Elphaba's. "But I'll preserve your name from
them, if you like," said Sarima. She walked Elphaba through the tall
warped oak doors into the dining hall and called, "Look who's here,
Auntie Guest." The sisters were standing beside their chairs, hungry and
curious and impatient. Four had the ladle in the tureen, snm , Six had
dressed in a hostile puce; Two and Three, the twins, looked piously at
their prayer cards; Five was smoking and blowing concentric rings toward
the platter of yellow eyeless fish they had dragged up from the
underground lake. "Sisters, rejoice, an old friend of Fiyero's has come
to share fond memories and enliven our lives. Welcome her as you do me."
Perhaps an unfortunate choice of words, as the sisters all resented and
despised Sarima. Why had she married someone who would die so early and
condemn them not just to spinsterhood but to deprivation and denial?

Elphaba didn't speak through the entire meal or look up from her plate.
She devoured the fish, though, and the cheese and the fruit. Sarima
deduced from her eating habits that she had lived under a rule of
silence at meals, and wasn't surprised, later, to hear about the mauntery.

They took a glass of precious sherry in the music room, and Six
entertained them with a wobbling nocturne. The guest looked miserable,
which made the sisters happy. Sarima sighed. The one thing that could be
said about the guest was this: She was older than Sarima. Perhaps, for
the short while of her stay, Elphaba would come out of that sulk and
lend an ear to hear how troubling and trying Sarima's life was. It would
be nice to chat with someone not in the family.


2
______
A week passed before Sarima said to Three, "Please tell our Auntie Guest
that I'd like to see her tomorrow for elevenses in the Solar." Sarima
thought that Elphaba had had enough time now to get the measure of
things. The suffering green woman was in some sort of slow-motion
thrall, or fit. She moved jerkily, stalking about the courtyard, or
stamping in to meals as if trying to poke holes in the flooring with her
heels. Her elbows were always bent at right angles, and her hands
clenched and unclenched themselves.

Sarima felt stronger than ever, which wasn't very. It did her some good
to have a contemporary around, however thwarted she might be. The
sisters disapproved of Sarima's cordiality, but the higher mountain
passes were already closed for the winter, and you just couldn't send a
stranger packing into the treacherous valleys. The sisters conferred in
their parlor, as they busied themselves knitting hateful gray potholders
for the undeserving poor at Lurlinemas. She's sick, they said; she's
inert, unfinished (even more than they were, was the unspoken corollary,
an immenseiy gratifying notion); she's damned. And is that fat balloon
of a boy her son, or a child slave, or is he one of her familiars?
Behind Sarima's back they called the woman living in the cobbleshed
Auntie Witch, echoing the old legends of Kumbricia, which were viler-and
more persistent-in the Kells than elsewhere in Oz.

It was Manek, Sarima's middle child, who was the most curious. One
morning, as the boys all stood on a battlement pissing over the side (a
game poor Nor had to pretend no interest in), Manek said, "What if we
peed on Auntie? Would she scream?"

"She'd turn you into a toad," said Liir.

"No, I mean would it hurt her? She looks like water gives her thi aches
and shakes. Does she even drink it? Or does it make her insides hurt?"

Liir, not an especially observant child, said. "I think she doesn' drink
it. Sometimes she washes things, but she uses sticks and brushes We
better not pee on her."

"And what does she do with all those bees and the monkey? An they magic?"

"Yeah," said Liir.

"What kind of magic?"

"I don't know." They stepped away from the dizzying drop and No came
running up. "I have a magic straw," she said, holding up a browi
bristle. "From the Witch's broom."

"Is the broom magic?" said Manek to Liir.

"Yes. It can sweep the floor real fast."

"Can it talk? Is it enchanted? What does it say?"

They got more interested, and Liir bloomed and blushed unde their
curiosity. "I can't tell. It's a secret."

"Is it still a secret if we push you off the tower?"

Liir considered. "What do you mean?"

"Will you tell us or we'll do it."

"Don't push me off the tower, you oafs."

"If the broom is magic it'll come flying by and save you. Beside5 you're
so fat you'd probably bounce."

Irji and Nor laughed at that, despite themselves. It made a ver funny
picture in their minds.

"We only want to know what secrets the broom says to you," sai' Manek
with a big smile. "So tell us. Or we'll push you off."

"You're not being nice, he's company," said Nor. "Come on, let's g find
some mice in the pantry and make friends."

"In a minute. Let's push Liir off the roof first."

"No," said Nor, beginning to cry. "You boys are so mean. Are yoi sure
that broom is magic, Liir?"

But Liir by now didn't want to say any more.

Manek tossed a pebble off the roof and it seemed a very long tim before
the ping of impact.

Liir's face had, in a matter of moments, developed deep black pockets
under the eyes. He held his hands down by his sides like a traitor at a
court martial. "The Witch'll be so mad at you that she will hate you,"
Liir said.

"I don't think so," said Manek, taking a step forward. "She won't care.
She likes the monkey more than she likes you. She won't even notice if
you're dead."

Liir gasped for air. Although he had just peed, the front of his baggy
trousers turned dark with wet. "Look, Irji," said Manek, and his older
brother looked. "He's not even very good at being alive is he? It's not
like it would be much of a loss. Come on, Liir, tell roe. What did the
damned broom say to you?"

Liir's upper torso was going in and out like a bellows. He whispered,
"The broom told me-that-that-you're all going to die!"

"Oh, is that all," said Manek. "We already knew that. Everybody dies. We
knew that already."

"You did?" said Liir, who hadn't.

"Come on," Irji said, "come on, let's catch some mice in the pantry and
we can cut off their tails and use Nor's magic straw to prick their eyes."

"No!" said Nor, but liji had swiped the straw from her. Manek and Irji
went clattering, loose-limbed as marionettes, along the parapet and down
the stairs. With a huge, aggrieved sigh, Liir composed himself and
adjusted his clothes, and followed them like a condemned dwarf laborer
in the emerald mines. Nor stayed behind, her arms folded defiantly, her
chin working with frustration. Then she spit over the edge and felt
better, and chased after the boys.


At midmorning, Six showed the guest into the Solar. With a smirk behind
Auntie's back, she deposited a tray of cruel little biscuits, hard as
slate, on a table covered with a carpet gone brown and patternless.
Sarima, having made her way through what she could of her daily
spiritual ablutions, felt ready.

"You've been here a week and it's likely to be longer," said Sarima,
allowing Six to pour out some gallroot coffee before dismissing her.
"The trail north is snowed in by now, and there's not a safe haven
between here and the plains. The winters are hard in the mountains, and
while we can make do with our stores and our own company, we treasure a
change.

Milk? I do not know exactly what you had-intended. Once you had visited
us sufficiently, I mean."

"There are rumors of caves in these Kells," Elphaba said, almost more to
herself than to Sarima. "I lived for some years at the Cloister of Saint
Glinda in the Shale Shallows, outside of the Emerald City. Dignitaries
would visit, and while we were often under a vow of silence, nonetheless
people would talk of what they knew. Monastic cells. I had thought, when
I was done here, that I might take myself to a cave and-and-"

"And set up housekeeping," said Sarima, as if this were as usual as
marrying and bearing babies. "Some do it, I know. There's an old hermit
on the western slope of Broken Bottle-that's a peak nearby-they say he's
been there for some years, and has reverted to a more primitive moment
of nature. Of his nature, I mean."

"A life without words," Elphie said, looking in her coffee and not
drinking it.

"They say this hermit has forgotten about personal hygiene," said
Sarima, "which, given how the boys smell when they go unwashed for a
couple of weeks, strikes me as nature's defense against marauding beasts."

"I didn't expect to be here for a long time," Elphie said, twisting her
head on her neck like a parrot and looking at Sarima in an odd way. Oh,
beware, thought Sarima carefully, though she tended to like this guest:

Beware, she's taking the direction of the discussion into her own hands.
This won't do. But the guest went on: "I had thought that I would have a
night or two, maybe three, and could find myself a hidey-hole before
winter set in. I was working on the wrong calendar, I was thinking of
how, and when, winter came to Shiz and the Emerald City. But you're six
weeks ahead here."

"Ahead in the autumn and behind in the spring, alas," said Sarima. She
took her feet off her hassock and placed them on the floor, flatly, to
indicate seriousness. "Now, my new friend, there are some things I need
to say to you."

"I have things too," Elphie said, but Sarima went on this time.

"You will think me an unpolished person, and you are right of course.
Oh, when I was selected to be a child bride, a good governess was hired
from Gillikin to teach me and my sisters how to use verbs and pronouns

and salad forks. And lately I have begun to master reading. But most of
what I picked up about polite behavior was from what Fiyero was good
enough to instruct me in when he returned from his education. No doubt I
make social mistakes. You have every right to snigger behind my back."

"I am not given to sniggering," snapped Elphaba.

"As it may be. But I still have opinions, and I'm observant even if
unschooled. Despite my sheltered life, married at the age of seven as
you may know, raised and reared behind castle curtain walls. I trust my
own sense of things and won't be dissuaded. So let me continue," she
said, as Elphaba tried to interrupt. "There is plenty of time and the
sun is nice in here, isn't it? My little hideaway.

"It seems to me that you have come here to-shall we say-relieve yourself
of some sad business or other. You have the look about you. Don't be
startled, my dear, if there's a look I do recognize, it's the look of
someone carrying a burden. Remember, I listen to my sisters, year in and
year out, as they graciously share with me all the ways they hate me,
and why." She smiled, amused at her own wit. "You want to throw down
your burden, throw it down at my feet, or across my shoulders. You want
perhaps to weep a little, to say good-bye, and then to leave. And when
you leave here you will walk right out of the world."

"I will do no such thing," said Elphie.

"You will indeed, even if you don't know it. You will have nothing left
to tie you to the world. But I know my own limits, Auntie Guest, and I
know what you're here for. You told me. You told me in the hall, you
said you felt you were responsible for Fiyero's death-"


"Don't. Just don't. This is my home, I am a nominal Dowager Princess of
Duckshit, but I have a right to hear and I have a right not to hear.
Even to make a traveler feel better."


"Don't."

"But I don't want to burden you, Sarima, I want to unburden you with the
truth-if you permit me, you are the larger, the lighter; forgiveness
blesses the donor as well as the receiver."

"I'll overlook that remark about my being the larger," said Sarima. "But
I still have the right to choose. And I think you wish me ill. You

wish me ill and you don't even know it. You want to punish me for
something. Maybe for not being a good enough wife to Fiyero. You wish me
ill and you fool yourself to think it's some therapeutic course of tablets."

"Do you know how he died, at least?" said Elphaba.

"I know it was a violent action, I know his body was never found, I know
it was in a little love nest," said Sarima, for a minute losing her
resolve. "I don't care to know who it was exactly, but I have heard
enough about that vile Sir Chuffrey to have my strong opin-"

"Sir Chujfrey!"

"I said no. I said no more. Now I have an offer to make of you, Auntie,
if you will have it. You and the boy may move into the southeast tower
if you like. There are a couple of big round rooms with high ceilings,
and good light, and you'll be out of that drafty cobbleshed, and warmer.
You'll have your own staircase to come and go into the main hall, and
you won't bother the girls and they won't trouble you. You can't stay in
that cobbleshed all winter. The boy has been looking pale and blubbery,
I think he's always cold. You're there on the condition, I'm afraid,
that you accept my firmest word on these matters. I don't care to
discuss my husband or the affairs of his death with you."

Elphaba looked horror-struck, and beaten. "I have no choice but to
accept," she said, "at least for the time being. But I warn you, I
intend to befriend you so thoroughly that you will change your mind. And
I do think you need to hear things, you need to talk about them, as I
do-and I can't leave into the wilderness until I have your solemn
promise of-"

"Enough!" said Sarima. "Call the porter from the gatehouse and have him
bring your luggage to the tower. Come, I'll show you. You haven't
touched your coffee." She stood. For an awkward moment there was respect
and suspicion, in equal measure, simmering on the carpet like the dust
in the sunbeams. "Come," Sarima said, more softly, "at the very least
you need to be warm. You must be able to say that much of us country
mice here at Kiamo Ko."


3
______
As far as Elphaba was concerned, it was a witch's room, and she reveled
in it. Like all good witch's rooms in children's stories, it was a

room with bowed walls, following the essential form of a tower. It had
one broad window that, since it faced east, away from the wind, could be
unbarred and opened without blowing everyone and everything out into the
snowy valleys. Beyond, the Great Kells were a rank of sentinels,
purple-black when the winter sun rose over them, draining into
blue-white screens as the sun moved overhead, and going golden and ruddy
in the late afternoon. There were sometimes rumbling collapses of ice
and scree.

The winter gripped the house. Elphaba learned soon enough to stay put
unless she was sure another room had a warmer fire. And except for
Sarima, she didn't care for the other human company the house afforded.
Sarima lived in the west wing, with the children: the boys Irji and
Manek, the girl Nor. Sarima's five sisters lived in the east wing-they
were called numbers Two through Six, and if they had ever had other
names they had withered away from disuse. By right of their
unmarriageability, the sisters claimed the best rooms in the place,
although Sarima had the Solar. Where Liir curled up to sleep Elphaba did
not know, but he reappeared every morning to change the rags at the
bottom of the crows' perch. He brought her cocoa, too.

Lurlinemas drew near, and out came some tired decorations from which the
gilt had all but vanished. The children spent a whole day tying baubles
and toys to the archways, making the grown-ups bump their heads and
curse. Manek and Irji took a saw and without permission went beyond the
castle walls to claim some boughs of spruce and sprigs of holly. Nor
stayed behind and painted scenes of happy life in the castle on sheets
of paper that she and Liir had found in Auntie Witch's room. Liir said
he couldn't draw, so he wandered off and disappeared, perhaps to stay
clear of Manek and Irji. The house fell still until there was a flurry
of copper pans thrown about the kitchen. Nor went running to see, and
Liir arrived from some hiding cubby to look too.

It was Chistery. The monkey was having a fit, and all the sisters,
baking gingerbread, were throwing gobbets of batter at him, trying to
knock him off the wheel that hung, noisy with swinging utensils, above
the worktable.

"How'd he get in here?" said Nor.

"Get him out, Liir, call him!" said Two. But Liir had no more authority
over Chistery than they did. The monkey flew to the top of a

wardrobe, then to a huge dried goods canister, and he pulled open a
drawer and found a precious store of raisins, which he stuffed in his
mouth. Six said, "Go get the ladder from the hall, you two, and bring it
here," but when they had, Chistery was back on the wheel, making it
whirl and clatter like a roundabout at a carnival.

Four put a lump of mashed melon in a bowl. Five and Three took off their
aprons, ready to rush him when he came down. Chistery was still eyeing
the fruit when the door smacked open against the wall and Elphaba came
lolloping in. "All this commotion, how can you hear yourselves think?"
she cried, and then took in the sight of Chistery, suddenly abject and
remorseful, and of the sisters, poised to ensnare him in their floury
aprons.

"What the hell is this?" she said.

"No need to yell," said Two sulkily, quietly, but they put down their
aprons.

"I mean, what is this? What is realiy going on here? You all look like
Killyjoy, with blood lust in your faces! You're white with rage at this
poor beast!"

"I think it's not rage, it's flour," said Five, which made them giggle.

"You filthy savages," said Elphie. "Chistery come here, come down here.
Right now. You women deserve to be unmarried, so you don't bring any
little savage creepy children into the world. Don't you ever lay a hand
on this monkey, do you hear me? And how did he get out of my room
anyway? I was in the Solar with your sister."

"Oh," said Nor, remembering, "oh, Auntie, I'm sorry. It was us."

"You?" She turned and looked at Nor as if for the first time, and Nor
didn't like it much. She shrank back against the door of the cold
cellar. "What were you skulking about in my room for?" said Elphie.

"Some paper," said Nor faintly, and in a desperate, all-or-nothing
gamble, said, "I made some paintings for everybody, do you want to see,
come here."

Chistery in her arms, Elphaba followed them into the drafty hall, where
the wind under the front door was making the papers flutter against the
carved stone. The sisters came too, a safe distance behind.

Elphie got very quiet. "This is my paper," she said. "I didn't say you
could use it. Look, it has words on the back. Do you know what words are?"

"Of course I do, do you think I am slow?" responded Nor sassily.

"You leave my papers alone," said Elphaba. She and Chistery then flew up
the steps, and the door to the tower slammed behind them.

"Who wants to help roll out the gingerbread?" said Two, relieved that
skulls hadn't been knocked together. "And this hall looks very pretty,
chickadees, I'm sure Preenella and Lurline will be impressed tonight."
The children went back into the kitchen and made gingerbread people, and
crows, and monkeys, and dogs, but they couldn't do bees, they were too
small. When Irji and Manek came in, dumping snowy greens on the slate
floor, they helped at the gingerbread shapes too, but they made naughty
shapes that they wouldn't show the younger children, and they kept
gobbling up the raw dough and laughing hysterically at it, which made
everyone else testy.


In the morning the children awoke and ran downstairs to see if Lurline
and Preenella had been there. Sure enough, there was a brown wicker
basket with a green and gold ribbon on it (a basket and a ribbon that
Sarima's children had seen many years in a row), and in it were three
small colored boxes, each one with an orange, a puppet, a small sack of
marbles, and a gingerbread mouse.

"Where's mine?" said Liir.

"Don't see one with your name on it," said Irji. "Look: Irji. Manek.
Nor. Guess Preenella left it for you at your old house. Where did you
used to live?"

"I don't know," said Liir, and started to cry.

"Here, you can have the tail of my mouse, just the tail," said Nor
kindly. "First you have to say, May I please have the tail of your mouse?"

"May I please have the tail of your mouse," said Liir, though his words
were almost unintelligible.

"And I promise to obey you."

Liir mumbled on. The exchange was eventually completed. From shame, Liir
didn't mention the oversight. Sarima and the sisters never took it in.

Elphaba didn't show her face all day, but she sent down a message that
Lurlinemas Eve and Lurlinemas always made her ill, and she was tak

ing a few days in solitary comfort, and she wanted to be disturbed
neither with meals, nor visitors, nor noise of any kind.

So while Sarima took herself off to her private chapel to remember her
dear husband on this holy day, the sisters and the children all sang
carols as loudly as they could.


4
______
A few weeks later, when the children were having snowball battles, and
Sarima was concocting some medicinal toddy in the kitchen, Elphie left
her room at last and skulked down the stairs and knocked on the door of
the sisters' parlor.

They didn't like it, but they felt obliged to welcome her. The silver
tray with bottles of hard liquor, the precious crystal carried on donkey
all the way from Dixxi House in Gillikin, the prettiest and red-richest
of native carpets on the floor, the luxury of fireplaces at both sides
of the room, each blazing merrily-well, they would have toned it down
some had they had any warning. As it was, Four hid in the sofa cushions
the leather volume from which she had been reading aloud, a racy history
of a poor young woman beset by an abundance of handsome suitors. It had
been a gift from Fiyero once, the best gift he had ever sent the
sisters-also the only one.

"Would you like some lemon barley water?" said Six, ever the servant
until the day she died, unless by luck everyone else died sooner.

"Yes, all right," Elphaba said.

"Do take a seat-this seat here, you'll find it most comfy."

Elphie didn't look as if she wanted to be comfy, but she sat there
anyway, stiff and uneasy in that quilted cocoon of a room.

She took the tiniest sip possible from her drink, as if suspecting
hellebore.

"I suppose I need to apologize for that flurry over Chistery," she said.
"I know I am your guest here at Kiamo Ko. Ijust flew off the handle."

"\Vell, you did just that," started Five, but the others said, "Oh,
think nothing of it, we all have days like that, in fact for us it
usually happens on the same day, it's been that way for years . .

"It's very taxing," Elphie said with some effort. "I spent many years
under a vow of silence, and I haven't always learned how-loud-it is

permissible to get. Besides that, this is a foreign culture, in a way."

"We Aijikis have always been proud of being able to speak to any other
citizen in Oz," said Two. "We are as equally at home with the ragged
vagabond Scrow to our south as with the elite in the Emerald City to our
east." Not that they'd ever been out of the Vinkus.

"A little nibble?" said Three, bringing out a tin of marzipan fruits.

"No," Elphie said, "but I wonder what you could tell me of your sister's
particular sadness."

They sat poised, tempted, and suspicious.

"I enjoy my chats with her in the Solar," said Elphie, "but whenever the
talk gets around to her departed husband-whom as you may realize I
myself knew-she is unwilling to discuss a thing."

"Oh, well, it was so sad," said Two.

"A tragedy," said Three.

"For her," said Four.

"For us," said Five.

"Auntie Guest, take a little orange liqueur in your lemon barley," said
Six, "it comes from the balmy slopes of the Lesser Kells and is quite a
luxury."

"Well, just a drop," said Elphie, but didn't sip it. She put her elbows
on her knees and leaned forward and said, "Please tell me how she
learned of Fiyero's death."

There was a silence. The sisters avoided casting glances at one another,
busying themselves with the pleats of their skirts. After a pause, it
was Two who said, "That sad day. It stings in the memory still."

The others adjusted themselves in their seats, turning slightly toward
her. Elphaba blinked twice, looking like one of her own crows.

Two told the tale, without sentiment or drama. One of Fiyero's business
colleagues, an Arjiki trader, had come through the mountain pass at the
first spring thaw, on the back of a mountain skark. He asked to meet
with Sanma and insisted her sisters be around to support her at his
woeful news. He told them how, on Lurlinemas, he had received at his
club an anonymous message that Fiyero had been murdered. There was an
address in a disreputable area-not even a residential neighborhood. The
clansman hired a couple of brutes and broke down the door of the
warehouse. Inside was a small apartment hidden upstairs, a place of assig

nation, obviously. (The clansman reported this without flinching,
perhaps as a power-mongering maneuver.) There was evidence of struggle
and massive quantities of blood, so thick in places that it was still
tacky. The body had been removed, and it was never recovered.

Elphaba only nodded, grimly, at this recounting.

"For a year," continued Two, "our dear distraught Sarima refused to
believe he was really dead. We would not have been surprised at a ransom
note. But by the following Lurlinemas, when no further word about it had
arrived, we had to accept the inevitable. Besides, the clan had gone on
as long as it could with an ad hoc collaborative leadership; they
demanded a single chief, and one was put forward, and he's served well.
When Irji comes of age he may claim the rights of progenitorship, if
he's bold enough; he is not yet bold at all. Manek is the more obvious
candidate, but he's only second in line."

"And what does Sarima believe happened?" said Elphie. "And you? All of you?"

Now that the grimmest part of the story had been told, the other sisters
felt they could chime in. It emerged that Sarima had for some years
suspected Fiyero of having an affair with an old college chum named
Glinda, a Gillikinese girl of legendary beauty.

"Legendary?" Elphie said.

"He told us all how charming she was, how self-effacing, what grace and
sparkle-"

"Is it all that likely he'd gush on and on about a woman he was
committing adultery with?"

"Men," said Two, "are, as we all know, both cruel and cunning.

What better ruse than to admit fervently and often that he admired her?

Sarima had no grounds on which to accuse him of slyness and deception.

He never stopped being attentive to her-"

"In his cold, morose, withdrawn, embittered fashion," interjected Three.

"Hardly the thing one reads about in novels," said Four.

"if one read novels," said Five.

"Which we don't," said Six, closing her lips over a marzipan pear.

"And so Sarima believes her husband was carrying on with this- this-"

"This dazzler," said Two. "You must have known her, didn't you go to Shiz?"

"I knew her a bit," Elphie said, her mouth forgetting to shut itself.
She was having a hard time keeping up with the multiple narrators. "I
haven't seen her in years."

"And it is clear in Sarima's mind what happened," said Two.

"Glinda was-for all I know still is-married to a wealthy older gentleman
named Sir Chuifrey. He must have suspected something, and had her
followed, and found out what was going on. Then he had some thugs kill
the bastard. I mean poor Fiyero. Doesn't that make sense?"

"It's entirely plausible," Elphie said slowly. "But is there any proof?"

"No proof at all," said Four. "If there were, family honor would have
required a retributive murder of Sir Chuifrey. But he may still be in
robust good health. No, it's only a theory, but it's what Sanma believes."

"Clings to," said Six.

"And why not," said Five.

"It's her prerogative," said Three.

"Everything's her prerogative," said Two sadly. "Besides, think of it.
If your husband were murdered, wouldn't it be easier to bear if you
thought he deserved it, even just a little?"

"No," Elphie said, "I don't think it would."

"Neither do we," admitted Two, "but we think that's what she thinks."

"And you?" Elphie asked, studying the pattern in the carpet, the blood
red lozenges, the thorny margins, the beasts and acanthus leaves and
rose medallions. "What do you think?"

"We hardly can be expected to subscribe to a unanimous opinion," said
Two, but she barreled ahead anyway. "It seems reasonable to suppose that
unbeknownst to us, Fiyero had gotten involved in some political
enterprise in the Emerald City."

"A stay that was to be a month became four," said Four.

"Had he political-sensibilities?" said Elphaba.

"He was the Prince of the Arjikis," Five reminded them all. "He had
connections-responsibilities-allegiances-who of us could guess at them?
It was his duty to have opinions on things we shouldn't need to know about."

"Was he sympathetic to the Wizard?" said Elphie.

"Are you saying was he involved in any of those campaigns?
Those-pogroms? First the Quadlirigs, then the Animals?" said Three. "You
look surprised that we should know about these things. Do you think
we're so very removed from the rest of Oz?"

"We are removed," said Two. "But we listen to talk. We like to feed
travelers when they come to stop. We know life can be rotten out there."

"The Wizard is a despot," said Four.

"Our home is our castle," said Five at the same time. "Some removal from
all this is healthy. We retain our moral fiber, unsullied."

They all smirked, simultaneously.

"But do you think Fiyero had an opinion about the Wizard?" Elphaba asked
again, pressing with some urgency.

"He kept his own counsel," snapped Two. "For the sake of sweet Lurline,
dear Auntie, he was a prince and a man!-and we were nothing bitt his
younger, dependent sisters-in-law! Do you think he would confide in us?
He could have been a high-level crony of the Wizard for all we know! He
surely would've had liaisons with the Palace, he was a prince. Even if
only of our small tribe. What he did with those liaisons-how are we to
say? But we don't think he died as the victim of a jealous husband.
Maybe we're sheltered, but we don't. We think he got caught in the
crossfire of some fringe struggle. Or he was found out in the act of
betrayal of one excitable group or other. He was a handsome man," said
Two, "and none of us would deny it, then or now. But he was intense and
private and we doubt he'd have loosened up enough to have an affair." By
the smallest gesture-a sucking in of her abdomen and a squaring of her
shoulders-Two betrayed the foundation of her position: How could he have
succumbed to this Glinda's charms if he had been able to resist his own
sisters-in-law?

"But," Elphie asked in a small voice, "do you really think he was a spy
for someone?"

"Why was his body never found?" said Two. "If it had been a jealous
rage, his body needn't have been removed. Perhaps he hadn't died yet.
Perhaps he was taken to be tortured. No, in our limited experience, we
think that this smacks of treachery of a political stripe, not a
romantic one."

"I-" said Elphaba.

"You're pale, dear. Six, please, a beaker of water-"

"No," said Elphaba. "It's just so-one never thought at the time- I
never. Shall I tell you what little I know of it? And perhaps you can
mention it to Sarima." She began to pace. "I saw Fiyero-"

But, at the oddest possible moment, family solidarity kicked in. "Dear
Auntie Guest," said Two, in a responsible tone, "we are under the
strictest orders from our sister not to allow you to tire yourself by
chatting about Fiyero and the sad circumstances of his death." Clearly
Two had to work to get this out, as the appetite to hear what Elphaba
had to say was huge. Stomachs were rumbling for the meat of it. But
propriety won out, or fear of Sarima's wrath if she were to find out.
"No," said Two again, "no, I'm afraid we mustn't express undue interest.
We may not listen and we will not tell Sarima what we hear."

In the end, Elphaba left them, drooping. "Another time," she kept
saying, "when you're ready, when she's ready. You see it's essential;
there's so much grief she could be released from-and that she herself
could lift, too-"

"Good-bye for now," they said, and the door closed behind her. The fires
in the twin fireplaces mirrored back and forth across the room, and they
took up positions of frustrated worthiness, at having to obey their
older sister-curse her to hell.


5
_____
Ice crusted the roofs, dislodged tiles, and dripped dirtily into the
private chambers, the music room, the towers. Elphaba took to wearing
her hat indoors to avoid the random icy dart on her scalp. The crows
were mildewy around the beak and had algae between the claws. The
sisters finished their novel, and collectively sighed-for life, for
life!-and began to read it again, as they had done for eight years. In
the fierce updraft from the valley, the snow seemed as often to be
rising as falling. The children adored it.

One glum afternoon Sarima bedecked herself in red woolen wraps and, out
of boredom, went wandering through musty, disused rooms. She located a
staircase in a trapezoidal, slanting shaft-perhaps this high

alcove leaned against the side of the gable you couldn't see, she wasn't
good at imagining architecture in three dimensions. She mounted the
stairs anyway. At the top, through a crude grillwork, she saw a figure
in the white gloom. Sarima coughed so as not to startle her.

Elphaba was bent almost double over a huge folio laid out on a
carpenter's work bench. She turned, surprised but not very, and said,
"We've had the same inclination, how curious."

"You've found some books, I'd completely forgotten," said Sarima. She
could read now, but not well, and books made her feel inferior. "I
couldn't tell you what they're all about. So many words, you'd hardly
think the world deserved such scrutiny."

"Over here is an archaic geography," said Elphie, "and some records of
usufruct pacts among various families of the Arjiki-I bet there are
leaders who would be very happy to see these. Unless they're outdated.
Some texts that Fiyero had in Shiz-I recognize them too, the life
sciences course of studies."

"And this big thing-purple pages and silver ink, how grand."

"I found it on the floor of this wardrobe. It seems to be a Grimmerie,"
Elphie said, running her hand down a page only softly buckled with
moisture. It made a pretty contrast, her hand on the vellum.

"What is that, besides beautiful?"

"As I understand it," Elphie said, "a sort of encyclopedia of things
numinous. Magic; and of the spirit world; and of things seen and unseen;
and of things once and future. I can only make out a line here or there.
Look how it scrambles itself as you watch." She pointed to a paragraph
of hand-lettered text. Sarima peered. Though her skill at reading was
minimal, she gaped at what she saw. The letters floated and rearranged
themselves on the page, as if enlivened. The page was changing its mind
as they watched it. The letters clotted together in a big black snarl,
like a mound of ants. Then Elphaba turned a page. "Here, this section is
a book of beasts." There were elegant, attenuated drawings in blood red
and gold leaf, on the front and rear elevations of (it seemed) an angel,
with notes in a fine hand on the aerodynamic aspects of holiness. The
wings flexed up and down and the angel smiled with a saucy sort of
sanctity. "And a recipe on this page. It says 'Of apples with black skin
and white flesh: to fill the stomach with greed unto Death."

"I remember this book now," Sarima said. "I do remember how it came to
be here, I even put it up here myself; I had forgotten. Well, books are
so easy to set aside, aren't they?"

Elphie looked up, her eyes leveling out under her smooth, rocklike brow.
"Tell me, Sarima, please."

The Dowager Princess of Kiamo Ko was flustered. She went to a small
window and tried to open it, but encrustations of ice prevented her. So
she sat down in a flump on a packing crate and told Elphaba the story.
She couldn't remember exactly when, but it was a long time ago, when
everyone was young and slim. Beloved Fiyero was still alive but he was
off in the Grasslands with the tribe. Complaining of a headache, she was
home in the castle all alone. The bell at the drawbridge sounded and she
went to see who it was.

"Madame Morrible," Elphaba said. "Some Kumbric Witch or other."

"No, it was no madame. It was an elderly man in a tunic and leggings,
with a cloak badly in need of attention by a seamstress. He said he was
a sorcerer, but perhaps he was just mad. He asked for a meal and a bath,
which he got, and then he said he wanted to pay by giving me this book.
I told him with a castle to run I didn't have much time for frivolity,
reading and such. He said never mind."

Sarima drew her robes about her, and traced a pattern in the cold dust
on a nearby stack of codexes. "He told me a fabulous tale and persuaded
me to take this thing from him. He said that it was a book of knowledge,
and that it belonged in another world, but it wasn't safe there. So he
had brought it here-where it could be hidden and out of harm's way."

"What a load of tripe," said Elphie. "If it came from another world I
shouldn't be able to read any of it. And I can make out a little."

"Even if it's as magic as he says?" said Sarima. "But you know, I
believed him. He said there was more congress between worlds than anyone
would credit, that our world has attributes of his, and his of ours, a
kind of leakage effect, or an infection maybe. He had a long fringy
whiteand-gray beard, and a very kind and abstracted manner, and he
smelled of garlic and sour cream."

"Indisputable proof of other-worldliness-"

"Don't mock me," said Sarima blandly, "you've asked me, so I'm

telling you. He said it was too powerful to be destroyed, but too
threatening-to that other place-to be preserved. So he made a magic trip
or something and came here."

"Kiamo Ko called to him and he couldn't resist her attractions-"

"He said we were isolated, and a stronghold," said Sarima, "and I
couldn't disagree! And what did it mean to me to take another book? We
just lugged it up here, and put it with the rest. I don't even know if I
told anyone about it. Then he blessed me and left. He walked with an
oak-thorn staff over the Locklimb Trail."

"Can you really say you thought the man who brought this here was a
sorcerer?" said Elphie. 'And that this book comes from-another world? Do
you even believe in other worlds?"

"I find it a great effort to believe in this one," said Sarima, "yet it
seems to be here, so why should I trust my skepticism about other
worlds? Don't you believe?"

"I tried to, as a child," said Elphie. "I made an effort. The mothy,
gormless, indistinct sunrise of salvation world-the Other Land-I
couldn't get it, I couldn't focus. Now I just think it's our own lives
that are hidden from us. The mystery-who is that person in the
mirror-that's shocking and unfathomable enough for me."

"Well he was a very nice sorcerer, or madman, or whatever."

"Maybe it was some agent loyal to the Ozma Regent," said Elphie.
"Secreting some ancient Lurlinist tract here. Anticipating a revival of
royalism, a Palace coup, worried about the kidnapped, sleep-charmed Ozma
Tippetarius, coming in disguise to hide this document far away, but
still retrievable

"You are full of conspiracy theories," said Sarima. "I've noticed that
about you. This was an elderly gentleman, very elderly. And he spoke
with an accent. He surely was a wandering magician from some other
place. And hasn't he been right? The thing has sat here, forgotten, for
what, ten years or more already."

"May I take it and look at it?"

"I don't care. He never said not to read it," said Sarima. 'At the time
I perhaps couldn't read at all-I forget: But look at that beautiful
angel there! Do you really mean to say you don't believe in the Other
Land? In an afterlife?"

"Just what we need." Elphaba snorted as she picked up the tome. 'A post
Vale-of-Tears Vale-of-Tears."


6
______
One morning, after Six had tried and given up once again at some sort of
lessons for the children, Irji suggested an indoor game of
hide-and-seek. They drew straws and Nor lost, so she hid her eyes and
counted. When she got bored with waiting she called out "One hundred!"
and looked about.

She tagged Liir first. Though he liked to disappear alone for hours at a
time, he was bad at hiding when it was required of him. So they hunted
together for the older boys, and found Irji in Sarima's Solar, crouching
behind the velvet ruffles suspended from the perch of a stuffed gryphon.

But Manek, the best at hiding, couldn't be found. Not in the kitchen,
the music room, the towers. Running out of ideas, the children even
dared to go down into the musty basement.

"There's tunnels from here all the way to hell," said Irji.

"Where? Why?" said Nor, and Liir echoed.

"They're hidden. I don't know where. But everybody says so. Ask Six. I
think because this used to be a waterworks headquarters-it did. Hell
burns so hot they need water, and the devils tunneled up to here."

Nor said, "Look, Liir, here's the fishwell."

In the center of a low-vaulted room, damp with moisture beaded up on its
stone walls, stood a low well with a wooden lid. There was a simple
device with a chain and a stone for shifting the lid sideways. It was
child's play to uncover the shaft.

"Down there," said Irji, "is where we get the fish we eat. Nobody knows
if there's a whole lake down there or if it's bottomless, or if you can
go down right to hell." He moved the rushlight about, and there was a
round of black water shining back a reflection, in chips and circles of
chilly white light.

"Six says there's a gold carp in there," said Nor. "She saw it once.
Biggest old thing, she thought it was a floating brass kettle bobbing to
the surface, and then it turned and looked at her."

"Maybe it was a brass kettle," said Liir.

"Kettles don't have eyes," said Nor.

'Anyway, Manek's not here," said Irji. "Is he?" He called, "Hello,
Manek," and the echo rolled and dissolved in the wet dark.

"Maybe Manek went down to hell in one of those tunnels," said Liir.

Irji swung the lid back on the fishwell. "But you're it, Nor, I'm not
going to look down here anymore."

They gave themselves the creeps, and raced back upstairs. Four yelled at
them for making too much noise.

Nor found Manek at last on the stairs outside the door to Auntie Guest's
rooms. "Shhh," he said as they came near, and Nor tapped him anyway,
saying, "You're out."

"Shhh," he said again, more urgently.

They took turns looking through the crack in the weathered grain of the
door.

Auntie had her finger in a book, and she was mumbling things to herself,
sounding them out this way and that. On the dresser next to her squatted
Chistery, in an uneasy, obedient silence.

"What's happening?" said Nor.

"She's trying to teach him to talk," said Manek.

"Let me look," said Liir.

"Say spirit," said Auntie in a kind voice. "Say spirit. Spirit. Spirit."

Chistery twisted his mouth to one side, as if considering it.

"There is no difference," said Auntie to herself, or maybe to Chistery.
"The strands are the same, the skeins are the same; the rock remembers;
the water has memory; the air has a past for which it can be held
accountable; the flame renews itself like a pfenix. What is an animal,
but made of rock and water and fire and ether! Remember how to speak,
Chistery. You are animal, but Animal is your cousin, damn you. Say spirit."

Chistery picked a nit off his chest and ate it.

"Spirit," sang Auntie, "there is spirit, I know it. Spirit!"

"Spit," said Chistery, or something like it.

Irji shoved Manek aside and the children almost fell through the door
trying to see Auntie laugh and dance and sing. She picked up Chistery
and hugged him, and said, "Spirit, oh spirit, Chistery! There is spirit!
Say spirit!"

"Spit, spit, spit," said Chistery, unimpressed with himself. "Spite."

But Killyjoy woke from a nap at the sound of a new voice.

"Spirit," said Auntie.

"Speared," said Chistery patiently. "Spared. Spored. Sput spot sput.
Spat spate spit, speed spurt spot."

"Spirit," said Auntie, "oh, my Chistery, we'll find ourselves a link
with Doctor Dillamond's old work yet! There is a universal design among
us all, could we get in deeply enough to see! Everything is not In vain!
Spirit, my friend, spirit!"

"Sport," said Chistery.

The children couldn't stop laughing. They clattered down the stairs and
fell into the dormitory, and giggled into the bedclothes.

They didn't mention what they saw to Sarima or the sisters. They were
afraid Auntie would be stopped, and they all wanted Chistery to learn
enough language so that he could play with them.


One windless day, when it seemed they must get out of Kiamo Ko or expire
of boredom, Sarima had the idea that they go skating on a nearby pond.
The sisters agreed, and dug out the rusting skates Fiyero had brought
back from the Emerald City. The sisters baked caramel sweets and
prepared flasks of cocoa, and even decorated themselves with green and
gold ribbons, as if it were a second Lurlinemas. Sarima adorned herself
in a brown velvet robe with fur tippets, the children put on extra
trousers and tunics, and even Elphaba came along, in a thick cloak of
purple brocade and heavy Arjiki goatskin boots, and mittens, carrying
her broom. Chistery lugged along a basket of dried apricots. The sisters
in sensible men's tribal overcoats, belted and latched, drew up the rear.

The villagers had cleared the snow off the center of the pond. It was a
ballroom dance floor of silver plate, engraved with the flourishes of a
thousand arabesques, mounded round with pillows and bolsters of snow to
provide a safe repose for skaters who forget how to brake or turn. In
the fierce sunlight, the mountains looked razor sharp against the blue;
great snowy egrets and ice griffons wheeled high above. The ice rink was
already noisy with screaming urchins and lurching adolescents (taking
every opportunity to tumble and heap each other cozily in suggestive
positions). Their elders moved more slowly, processionally around the

ice. The crowd fell silent as the household of Kiamo Ko approached, but,
children being children, the silence didn't last for long.

Sarima ventured out onto the ice, her sisters in a knot around her with
linked arms. Being largish, Sarima was nervous of falling, nor were her
ankles strong. But before long she had remembered how things went-this
foot, then that, long languorous strides-and the uneasy meeting of
social classes was accomplished. Elphaba looked like one of her crows:
knees out, elbows flailing, rags flapping, gloved hands raking for balance.

After the adults had had enough excitement (but the children were only
still warming up) Sarima and the sisters and Elphie collapsed on some
bearskins that the citizenry had spread out for them.

"In the summer," said Sarima, "we have a huge bonfire and slaughter some
pigs, before the men descend to the plains, or the boys ascend to the
slopes to guard the sheep and the goats. They all come into the castle
for a chew of pork and a few tankards of ale. And of course, any time
there's a mountain lion or a particularly nasty bear, we let them into
the keep until the beast is killed or wanders away." She smiled with
noblesse oblige in an abbreviated way, off into the middle distance,
though the locals were ignoring the castle folk by now. 'Auntie dear,
you looked quite the sight in that robe, and poking along with that broom."

"Liir says it's a magic broom," said Nor, who had run up to throw a
handful of granular snowflakes into her mother's face. Elphaba turned
her head quickly and tugged her collar up to avoid ricocheting snow
spray. Nor laughed unkindly in a beautiful phrase like a woodwind, and
scampered away.

"So tell us how your broom came to be magic," said Sarima.

"I never said it was magic. I got it from an elderly maunt named Mother
Yaclde. She took me under her wing, when she was alert enough, and gave
me-well, guidance, I suppose you'd call it."

"Guidance," said Sarima.

"The old maunt said the broom would be my link to my destiny," said
Elphie. "I assume she meant that my destiny was domestic. Not magic."

"Join the sisterhood." Sarima yawned.

"I never knew if Mother Yackle was completely mad or a wise, prophetic
old hen," said Elphie, but the others weren't listening, so she lapsed
into silence.

After a while Nor came flinging herself into her mother's lap again.
"Tell me a story, Mama," she said. "Those boys are nasty."

"Boys are vexing creatures," agreed her mother. "Sometimes. Shall I tell
you the story of when you were born?"

"No, not that," said Nor, yawning. 'A real story. Tell me about the
Witch and the fox babies again."

Sarima protested, knowing full well that the children considered Auntie
Guest a witch. But Nor was stubborn and Sarima relented, and told the
tale. Elphaba listened. Her father had taught her moral precepts, had
lectured her about responsibility; Nanny had gossiped; Nessarose had
whined. But no one had told stories to her when she was young. She
pulled herself forward a little so she could hear over the noise of the
crowd.

Sarima recited the tale with little dramatic involvement, but even so,
Elphaba felt a twinge when she heard the conclusion. 'And there the
wicked old Witch stayed, for a good long time."

"Did she ever come out?" recited Nor, eyes gleaming with the fun of the
ritual.

"Not yet," answered Sarima, and leaned forward, pretending to bite Nor
on the neck. Nor squealed and jiggled herself away, and ran to rejoin
the boys.

"I think that's shameful, even if it's just a story, to propose an
afterlife for evil," said Elphaba. "Any afterlife notion is a
manipulation and a sop. It's shameful the way the unionists and the
pagans both keep talking up hell for intimidation and the airy Other
Land for reward."

"Don't," Sarima said. "For one thing, that's where Fiyero is waiting for
me. And you know it."

Elphaba's jaw dropped. When she least expected it, Sarima always seemed
ready to rush in with a surprise attack. "In the afterlife?" said Elphie.

"Oh, what you do take against," said Sarima. "I pity the community of
the afterlife when they're asked to welcomeyou in. What a sour apple you
always are."


7
______
She's crazy," said Manek knowledgeably. "Everyone knows that you can't
teach an animal to talk."

They were in the abandoned summer stable, jumping off a loft, making
puffs of hay and snow billow in the patchy light.

"Well, what is she doing with Chistery then?" asked Irji. "If you're so
sure of it?"

"She's teaching him to mimic, like a parrot," said Manek.

"I think she's magic," said Nor.

"You, you think everything's magic," Manek said. "Stupid girl."

"Well, everything is," said Nor, launching herself away from the boys as
a further editorial comment on their skepticism.

"Do you really think she's magic?" said Manek to Liir. "You know her
better than any of us. She's your mother."

"She's my Auntie, isn't she?" Liir said.

"She's our Auntie, she'syour mother."

"I know," said Irji, pretending full immersion in the topic to avoid
another jump. "Liir is Chistery's brother. Liir is what Chistery was
like before she taught him how to talk. You're a monkey, Liir."

"I'm not a monkey," said Liir, "and I'm not magicked."

"Vv'ell, let's go ask Chistery," said Manek. "Is this the day that
Auntie has her coffee with Mama? Let's go see if Chistery has learned
enough words to answer some questions."

They scampered up the stone spiral staircase to Auntie Witch's apartment.

True, she was gone, and there was Chistery nibbling on some nutshells,
and KIllyjoy dozing by the fire, growling in his sleep, and the bees
doing their ceaseless chorus. The children didn't like bees much, nor
did they care for Killyjoy. Even Liir had lost interest in the dog once
he had children to play with. But Chistery was a favorite. "Sweet thing,
oh the little baby," said Nor. "Here, you little beast, come to Auntie
Nor." The monkey looked doubtful, but then on knuckles and capable feet
he swung across the floor and vaulted into her arms. He inspected her
ears for treats, peered over her shoulders at the boys.

"You tell us, Chistery boy, is Auntie Witch really magic?" said Npr.
"Tell us all about Auntie Witch."

"Watch Witch," said Chistery, playing with his fingers. "Which wretch
which?" They could have sworn it was a question, the way his forehead
wrinkled like eyebrows.

lire you unaer a spell?" saia Manek.

"Spell ill. Spoil spell," answered Chistery. "Spill all."

"How do we spoil the spell? How do we turn you back to a boy?" asked
Irji, the oldest but just as caught up as the others. "Is there a
special way?"

"Why way?" said Chistery. "We woo, we weigh woe. Why?"

"Tell us what to do," said Nor, petting him.

"Do, die," said Chistery.

"Great," said Irji. "So we can't break the spell you're under?"

"Oh, he's only babbling," Elphaba said from the doorway. "Look, I have
visitors I didn't even invite."

"Oh hello, Auntie," they said. They knew they shouldn't be there. "He's
talking, sort of. He's magicked."

"He mostly just repeats what you say," said Elphaba, moving closer. "So
leave him alone. You're not allowed here."

They said, "Sorry," and left. Back in the boys' room, they fell on the
mattress and roared until they wept, and couldn't say what was so funny.
Maybe it was the relief of having escaped without harm from the Witch's
rooms, even though they had no business there. The children decided they
were no longer scared of Auntie Witch.


8
______
They were tired of being housebound, but finally it was raining out

instead of snowing. They played hide-and-seek a lot, waiting for the
rain to lift so they could go outside.

One morning, Nor was it. She kept finding Manek easily, because Liir
always hid near him and gave him away. Manek lost his patience. "I
always get caught, because you're so hopeless. Why can't you hide well?"

"I can't hide in the well," Liir said, misunderstanding.

"Oh yes you can," Manek said, delighted.

The next round began, and Manek led Liir right down the basement steps.
The basement was even damper than usual, with the groundwater seeping
through the foundation stones. When they swiveled the lid off the
fishwell, they could see the water level had risen. But it was still a
good twelve or fourteen feet down.

"This'll just be fine," Manek said, "look, if we loop the rope over this
hook, the bucket will hold steady enough for you to climb in it. Then
when I let the crank out, the bucket will slowly slide down the side of
the well. I'll stop it before it gets to the water, don't worry. Then
I'll put the lid on and Nor will look and look! She'll never find you."

Liir peered into the clammy shaft. "What if there are spiders?"

"Spiders hate water," said Manek authoritatively. "Don't worry about
spiders."

"Why don't you do it?" said Liir.

"You're not strong enough to lower me, that's why," said Manek patiently.

"Don't hide far away," said Lift. "Don't let me down too far. Don't push
the cover on all the way, I don't like the dark."

"You're always complaining," Manek said, giving him a hand. "That's why
we don't like you, you know."

"Well, everybody's mean to me," Liir said.

"Crouch down now. Hold on to the ropes with both hands. If the bucket
scrapes against the wall a little bit just push yourself away. I'll let
it down slowly."

"Where are you going to hide?" Liir said. "There isn't anyplace else in
this room."

"I'll hide under the stairs. She'll never find me in the shadows, she
hates spidcrs."

"I thought you said there weren't any spiders!"

"She thinks there are," Manek said. "One two three. This is really a
good idea, Liir. You're so brave." He grunted with the effort. Liir was
heavier in the bucket than he had figured, and the rope spooled too
quickly. It jammed in the joint between the windlass and the struts, and
the bucket stopped and smashed against the wall with an echoing thud.

"That was too fast," came Liir's voice, ghostly in the gloom.

"Oh, don't be a sissy," Manek said. "Now shhh, I'm going to pivot the
cover back on partway, so she won't guess. Don't make any noise."

"I think there's fish down here."

"Of course there are, it's a fishwell."

"Well, I'm awfully near the water. Do they jump?"

"Yes they jump, and they have sharp teeth, you ninny, and they like

fat little boys," said Manek. "Of course they don't jump. Would I put
you in danger like that if they did? Honestly, you don't trust me at
all, do you?" He sighed, as if disappointed beyond words, and when the
cover slid all the way on instead of part way, he noted without surprise
that Liir was too hurt to complain.

Manek hid under the stairs for a little while. When Nor didn't come down
he decided that behind the altar skirts of the old musty chapel would be
an even better hiding place. "Be right back, Liir," he hissed, but since
Liir didn't answer Manek guessed he was still nursing his grievances.


Sarima was taking a rare turn in the kitchen, concocting a stew out of
limp vegetables from the keeping room. The sisters were having a dance
recital amongst themselves in the music room overhead. "Sounds like a
herd of elephants," Sarima said, when Auntie Guest came wandering
through, looking for something to snack on.

"I didn't expect to see you here," said Elphaba. "You know, I have a
complaint to lodge against your children."

"The sweet little vandals, what now," Sarima said, stirring. "Have they
been putting spiders in your bedsheets again?"

"I wouldn't mind spiders. At least the crows could eat them. No, Sarima,
the children rifle through my belongings, they tease Chistery
unmercifully, and they will not listen when I talk to them. Can't you do
anything with them?"

"What's to be done?" said Sarima. "Here, taste this rutabaga, is it gone
to the dogs?"

"Even Killyjoy wouldn't touch this," decided Elphie. "You better stick
with the carrots. I think those children are ungovernable, Sarima.
Oughtn't they be off to school?"

"Oh yes, in a better life they would be, but how can they?" said their
mother placidly. "I've already told you that they're sitting targets for
ambitious Aijiki tribesmen. It's bad enough even to let them run around
on the slopes near Kiamo Ko in the summer, I never know when they're
going to be found, trussed, and bled like a pig, and brought home for
burying. It's the cost of widowhood, Auntie; we must do the best we can."

"I was a good child," Elphie said stoutly. "I took care of my little sis

ter, who was horribly disfigured from birth: I obeyed my father, and my
mother until she died. I tramped around as a missionary child and gave
testimonials to the Unnamed God even though I was essentially faithless.
I believed in obedience, and I don't believe it hurt me."

"Then what did hurt you?" asked Sarima wittily.

"You won't listen," said Elphie, "so I won't even say. But for whatever
reasons, your children are ungovernable. I disapprove of your lax ways."

"Oh, children are good at heart," Sarima said, intent on scraping
carrots. "They are so innocent and gay. It cheers me up to see them
dashing about the house in this game or that. All too soon these
precious days will be past, dear Auntie, and then we will look back on
when this house was filled with peals of childish laughter."

"Fiendish laughter."

"There is something inherently good about children," said Sarima
decidedly, warming to the subject. "You know that little Ozma, who all
those years ago was deposed by the Wizard? They say that she is off
someplace, frozen in a cave-perhaps even in the Kells, for all I know.
She's preserved in her childhood innocence because the Wizard hasn't the
courage to kill her. One day she'll come back to rule Oz, and she'll be
the best and wisest sovereign we ever had, because of the wisdom of youth."

"I've never believed in child saviors," Elphaba said. 'As far as I'm
concerned, children are the ones who need saving."

"You're just cross because the children have such high spirits."

"Your children are evil sprites," Elphie said, in a snit.

"My children aren't evil, nor were my sisters and I evil children."

"Your children aren't good," said Elphie.

"Well, how do you judge Liir in this regard, then?"

"Oh, Liir," Elphie said, and made an expression, and said pfaaaah, with
her tongue and hands. Sarima was about to pursue this-a matter she had
long been curious about-when Three came rushing into the kitchen.

"The passes below us must have melted sooner than usual," she said, "for
we have sighted a caravan struggling its way over the Locklimb Trail,
coming from the north! It'll be here by tomorrow!"


9
______
It was lunchtime when the skarks and the wagon began the final,
difficult ascent up the slope to the castle portcullis and the gates of
jasper and oak. The townspeople came out from their hovels and leaned
their weight against the carriage, helping it through the ruts of mud
and ice, until at last it turned in and crossed the open drawbridge.
Elphaba, her curiosity as piqued as anyone else's, stood with the
Dowager Princess of the Aijikis and her sisters on a parapet above the
crudely carved front doorway. The children waited in the cobblestoned
yard below, all but Liir.

The leader, a grizzed young man, made the faintest mountain obeisance to
Sarima. The skarks defecated sloppily on the cobbles, to the delight of
the children, who had never seen skark fewmets before. Then

"Oh, rapture," Sarima said, "and the castle such a mess! This always
happens. Why don't we learn? Quick, call the children and we'll have to
organize a scrub and polish. You never know, Auntie, it could be an
honored guest. You have to be prepared."

Manek and Nor and liji came running from their game. Three told them the
news, and they immediately had to dash up the highest tower to see what
they could see through the slackening rain, and to wave aprons and
handkerchiefs. Yes, there was a caravan, five or six skarks and a small
wagon, pulling through the snow and the mud, having trouble fording this
stream, stopping to mend a split wheel, stopping to feed the skarks! It
was a wonderful treat, and all through the dinner meal of vegetable soup
the children chattered away at the surprises they might find among the
passengers in the caravan. "They've never stopped thinking their father
is going to come back," said Sarima under her breath to Elphaba. "This
excitement is a hope for him, though they don't remember it."

"Where is Liir?" asked Four, "it's a perfect waste of good soup when he
doesn't show up on time. He shan't get any if he comes whining to me
afterward. Children, where is Liir?"

"He was playing with us earlier. Maybe he fell asleep," said Irji.

"Let's go set a bonfire and smoke the travelers a hello," said Manek,
leaping from the table.

the leader went to the cabin and opened the door, and climbed inside.
They could hear his voice, raised loudly as if talking to someone hard
of hearing.

They waited. The sky was a piercing blue, really almost a spring blue,
and the icicles hung from the eaves in dangerous daggers, melting like
mad. The sisters all sucked in their stomachs, cursing the extra piece
of gingerbread, the honeyed cream in the coffee, vowing to do better.
Please, sweet Lurlina, let it be a i-nan.

The leader came out again, and proffered a hand, and he helped a figure
alight from the cabin: an old, creaky-limbed figure, in sad dark skirts
and a hideously out-fashioned bonnet, even from the provincial point of
view.

But Elphaba was leaning forward, cleaving the air with her sharp chin
and hatchet nose, and sniffing like a beast. The visitor turned and the
sun struck her face.

"Good glory," breathed Elphie. "It's my old Nanny!" And she left the
parapet to run and gather the old woman in her arms.

"Human feeling, will you look at that," said Four, snify. "I wouldn't
have guessed her capable." For Auntie Guest was all but sobbing with
pleasure.


The caravan leader wouldn't stay for a meal, but Nanny with her valises
and trunks clearly did not intend to go any farther. She settled in a
small musty room just below Elphaba's, and took the endless time it
takes the elderly to make her toilet. By the time she was ready to be
sociable, dinner was served. A gamey old hen, more rope than flesh, lay
in a thin pepper sauce on one of the good salvers. The children were
dressed in their best, and allowed this once to dine in the formal hall.
Nanny came in on the arm of Elphaba, and sat at her right hand. Because
this was a visitor to Elphie, the sisters had kindly put ElphIe's napkin
ring at the foot of the table, opposite Sanma-a place by custom left
vacant, in honor of poor dead Fiyero. It was a big mistake, and they
would recognize it almost immediately, as Elphaba never relinquished her
advancement. But for now all was smiles and savory hospitality. The only
small annoyance (besides that Nanny wasn't a young eligible princeling
looking for a bride) was that Liir still conducted his campaign of
sullen disappearance. The children didn't know where he was.

Nanny was a tired and fruity old woman, skin cracked like dried soap,
hair thin and yellowy white, hands with veins as prominent as the cords
around a good Aijiki goat cheese. She communicated wheezily, with lots
of pauses to breathe and think, that she had heard through someone named
Crope, in the Emerald City, that her old charge Elphaba had attended
Tibbett in his last days at the Cloister of Saint Glinda outside the
Emerald City. No one in the family had heard from Elphaba in years and
years, and Nanny had decided to take it upon herself to find her. The
maunts were reluctant at first, but Nanny had persisted, and then she
had waited until a new caravan was ready to leave. The maunts had told
her about Elphaba's mission in Kiamo Ku, and Nanny had booked passage
the following spring. And here she was.

"And of the outside world?" asked Two eagerly. Let them catch up on
family gossip on their own time.

"What do you mean?" said Nanny.

"Politics, science, fashion, the arts, the driving edge!" said Two.

"Well, our redoubtable Wizard has crowned himself Emperor," said Nanny.
"Did you know that?"

They hadn't heard. "By whose authority?" asked Five, scoffing, "And
furthermore, Emperor over what?"

"There isn't anyone who has any more authority, he said," said Nanny
calmly, "and who could argue with that? He's in the business of handing
out honors annually as it is. He just tacked on an extra one for
himself. As for Emperor over what, I couldn't say. Some people whisper
that this implies expansionist aims. But where he could expand to-I
couldn't say, I just couldn't. Into the desert? Beyond, to Quox, or Ix,
or Fliaan?"

"Or does he mean to have a more tight-fisted hold on terrain he's only
loosely governed," asked Elphaba, "like the Vinkus?" She felt a chill,
like an old wound deep beneath her breastbone.

"No one is particularly happy," said Nanny. "There is an enforced
conscription now, and the Gale Force threatens to outnumber the Royal
Army. One doesn't know if there could be an internal struggle for power,
and the Wizard is preparing against an eventual takeover attempt. How
can one have an opinion about such things? Old and female as we are?"
She smiled to include them all. The sisters and Sarima glared as
youthfully as they could back at her.


10
______
The next day hardly dawned at all, so gloomy with rain, so glowery with
featureless clouds.

In the parlor, waiting for Nanny to emerge and continue her obligation
of entertaining them, the sisters and Sarima discussed what new facts
they had learned about their Auntie Guest. "Elphaba," mused Two. "It's a
pretty enough name. Where does it come from?"

"I remember," said Five, who had once gone through a faintly religious
phase when she realized marriage possibilities were growing dim. "I had
a Lives of the Saints once. Saint Aelphaba of the Waterfall-she was a
Munchkinlander mystic, six or seven centuries ago. Don't you remember?
She wanted to pray, but she was of such beauty that the local men kept
pestering her for-attention."

They all sighed, in chorus.

"To preserve her sanctity, she went into the wilderness with her holy
scriptures and a single bunch of grapes. Wild beasts threatened her, and
wild men hunted after her, and she was sore distressed. Then she came
upon a huge waterfall coursing off a cliff. She said, 'This is my cave,'
and took off all her clothes, and she walked right through the screen of
pounding water. Beyond was a cavern hollowed out by the splashing water.
She sat down there, and in the light that came through the wall of water
she read her holy book and pondered on spiritual matters. She ate a
grape every now and then. When at last she had finished her grapes, she
emerged from the cave. Hundreds ofyears had passed. There was a village
built on the banks of the stream, and even a milldam nearby. The
villagers shrank in horror, for as children they had all played in the
cavern behind the waterfall-lovers had trysted there-murders and foul
deeds had taken place there-treasure had been buried there-and never had
anyone ever seen Saint Aelphaba in her naked beauty. But all Saint
Aelphaba had to do was open her mouth and speak the old speech, and they
all knew that it must be she, and they built a chapel in her honor. She
blessed the children and the elderly, and heard the confessions of the
middle-aged, and healed some sick and fed some hungry, that sort of
stuff, and then disappeared behind the waterfall again with another
bunch of grapes. I think a bigger bunch this time. And that's the last
anyone has seen of her."

"So you can disappear and not be dead," said Sarima, looking out the
window a little dreamily, past the rain.

"If you're a saint," said Two pointedly.

"If you even believe it," said Elphaba, who had come into the parlor
during the end of the recitation. "The reemerging Saint Aelphaba might
have been some hussy from the next town over who wanted to give gullible
peasants a good going over."

"That's doubt for you, it scours hope out of everything," Sarima said
dismissively. "Auntie, you kill me sometimes, you really do."

"I think it would be charming to call you Elphaba," said Six, "because
that is a charming story. And it's nice to hear your real name on
Nanny's lips."

"Don't you try it," said Elphie. "If Nanny can't help herselL so be it;
she's ancient and it's hard to change. But not you."

Six pursed her lips as if to make an argument, but just then there was a
clattering of feet from downstairs, and Nor and Irji burst into the room.

"We found Liir!" they said. "Come on, we think he's dead! He's fallen in
the fishwell!"

They all pounded down the stairs to the basement. Chistery had been the
one to find him. The snow monkey's nose had wrinkled when he and the
boys passed the fishwell, and he had whined, and whimpered, and tugged
at the weighted cover. Nor and Itji had had an idea to lower him down in
the bucket then, but when they swiveled the cover off, the lurid gleam
of light on pale human flesh had terrified them.

Manek came running when he heard the noise of his mother and the others
exclaiming before the well. They pulled Liir up. The water had risen,
what with continued melting and the further rain. Liir was like a corpse
left in a stream, bloated. "Oh, is that where he was," said Manek in a
funny voice. "You know he said he wanted to go down in that fishwell once."

"Get away, children, you shouldn't see this, go upstairs," Sarima said,
scolding. "Come on now, behave, upstairs for you." They didn't know what
they were looking at and they were afraid to look too closely.

"I cannot believe it, this is so terrible," said Manek excitedly, and
Liphaba gave him a sharp, hateful look.

"Obey your mother," she snapped, and Manek made a nasty face, but he and
Irji and Nor clomped upstairs, and huddled around the open doorway at
the top to listen, and peer.

"Oh, who has the art of medicine in their hands, have you, Auntie?"
asked Sarima. "Quick now, there may be time. You have the arts, don't
you, you studied the life sciences! What can you do?"

"liii, go get Nanny, tell her it's an emergency," shouted Elphie. "We'll
bring him up to the kitchen, gently now. No, Sarima, I don't know enough."

"Use your spells, use your magic!" exclaimed Five.

"Bring him back," urged Six, and Three added, "You can do it, don't be
hidden and shy about it now!"

"I can't bring him back," said Elphaba, "I can't! I have no aptitude for
sorcery! I never did! That was all a foolish campaign of Madame
Morrible's, which I rejected!" The six sisters looked at her askance.

Irji escorted Nanny to the kitchen, Nor brought the broom, Manek brought
the Grimmerie, and the sisters and Sarima brought the body of Liir,
dripping and bloated, and laid him on the butcher's block. "Oh, now
who's this one," mused Nanny, but got to work pumping the legs and the
arms, and set Sarima to pressing in at the abdomen.

Elphaba flipped through the Grimmerie, she screwed up her face and hit
herself on the temple with her fists, and wailed, "But I have no
personal experience with a soul-how can I find his if I don't know what
one looks like?"

"He's even fatter than usual," said Irji.

"If you prick his eyes out with a magic straw from the magic broom, his
soul will come back," said Manek.

"I wonder why he went in the fishwell?" said Nor. "I never would."

"Holy Lurlina, mercy on us, mercy!" said Sarima, weeping, and the
sisters began to mumble the service of the dead, honoring the Unnamed
God for the life departed.

"Nanny can't do everything," snapped Nanny, "Elphaba, be some help!
You're just like your mother in a Crisis! Put your mouth on his and push
air into his lungs! Go on!"

Elphaba wiped the wet off Liir's pasty face with the edge of her sleeve.
The face stayed where it was pushed. She grimaced, and nearly

vomited, and spit something into a bucket, and then she sank her mouth
down on the child's, and breathed out, pushing into the sour passage her
own sour breath. Her fingers tensed at the sides of the butcher's block,
gouging splinters, as if in an ecstasy of sexual tension. Chistery
breathed along with her, breath for breath.

"He smells like fish," Nor said under her breath.

"If that's what you look like when you drown, I'd rather burn to death,"
said Iiji.

"I'm just not going to die," Manek said, "and nobody can make me."

The body of Liir began to choke. They thought at first it was an
involuntary reaction, air from Elphaba's mouth pocketing and blurting
out again, and then there was a small stream of yellowish yuck. Then
Liir's eyelids moved, and his hand twitched of its own accord.

"Oh mercy," Sarima murmured. "It's a miracle. Thank you Lurlina! Bless you!"

"We're not out of the woods yet," said Nanny. "He may still die of
exposure. Quick now, off with his clothes."

The children watched the silly indignity of grown-up women tearing
stupid Liir's trousers and tunic off. They rubbed him all over with
lard. This gave the children a case of the giggles, and made liji feel
very funny in his trousers, for the first time in his life. Then they
wrapped Liir in a woolen blanket, which made quite a mess, and prepared
to put him to bed.

"Where does he sleep?" said Sarima.

They all looked at one another. The sisters looked at Elphaba, and
Elphaba looked at the children.

"Oh, sometimes on the floor in our room, sometimes on the floor in
Nor's," said Manek

"He wants to sleep in my bed too but I push him out," said Nor. "He's
too fat, there'd be no room for me and my dollies."

"He doesn't even have a bed?" Sarima coldly asked Elphie.

"Well, don't ask me, this is your house," said Elphie.

And Liir stirred somewhat, and said, "The fish talked to me. I talked to
the fish. The goldfish talked to me. She said she was

"Hush, little one," said Nanny, "time for that later." She glared around
at the women and children in the kitchen. "Well, it shouldn't take Nanny
to have to find him a proper bed, but if there's none other

for him he can come up to my room, and I'll sleep on the floor!"

"Of course not, the very idea," began Sarima, bustling ahead.
"Barbarians, the lot of you!" snapped Nanny.

For which no one In Kiamo Ko ever forgave her.


Sarima lectured Auntie Guest severely for what had happened to Liir.
Elphaba tried to say that it was not her doing, it was not her fault.
"It was some boys' trick, some game, some dare," she said. Their
accusations spent, they fell to talking about the differences between
boys and girls.

Sarima told Auntie Guest what she knew of the boys' initiation rite in
the tribe. "They are taken out in the grasslands, and left with nothing
but a loincloth and a musical instrument. They are required to call
forth spirits and animals out of the night, to converse with them, to
learn from them, to soothe them if they need soothing, to fight them if
they need fighting. The child who dies at night clearly lacks the
discretion to decide if its company needs fighting, or soothing. So it
is correct that he should die young and not burden the tribe with his
foolishness."

"What do the boys say of spirits who approach them?" asked Auntie Guest.

"Boys say very little, especially about the spirit world," she answered.
"Nonetheless, you pick up what you pick up. And I think some of the
spirits are very patient, very wearing, very obdurate. The lore supposes
there should be conflict, hostility, battle, but I wonder, in contact
with spirits, if what the boy needs is a good helping of cold anger."

"Cold anger?"

"Oh yes, don't you know that distinction? Tribal mothers always tell
their children that there are two kinds of anger: hot and cold. Boys and
girls experience both, but as they grow up the angers separate according
to the sex. Boys need hot anger to survive. They need the inclination to
fight, the drive to sink the knife into the flesh, the energy and
initiative of fury. It's a requirement of hunting, of defense, of pride.
Maybe of sex, too."

"Yes, I know," said Elphaba, remembering.

Sarima blushed and looked unhappy, and continued. "And girls need cold
anger. They need the cold simmer, the ceaseless grudge, the talent to
avoid forgiveness, the sidestepping of compromise. They need to

know when they say something that they will never back down, ever, ever.
It's the compensation for a more limited scope in the world. Cross a man
and you struggle, one of you wins, you adjust and go on-or you lie there
dead. Cross a woman and the universe is changed, once again, for cold
anger requires an eternal vigilance in all matters of slight and
offense." She glared at Elphaba, pinning her with unspoken accusations
about Fiyero, about Liir.

Elphaba thought about this. She thought about hot anger and cold anger,
and if it divided by the sexes, and which she felt, if either, if ever.
She thought about her mother dying young, and her father with his
obsessions. She thought about the anger that Doctor Dillamond had had-an
anger that drove him to study and research. She thought about the anger
that Madame Morrible could barely disguise, as she tried to seduce the
college girls into the secret service of government.

She sat and thought about it the following morning as she watched the
strengthening sun beat down on the mounds of snow on the sloping tiled
roofs below. She watched the sun bleed ice water out of the icicle. Warm
and cold working together to make an icicle. Warm and cold anger working
together to make a fury, a fury worthy enough to use as a weapon against
the old things that still needed fighting.

In a fashion-without any way to confirm It, of course-she had always
felt as capable of hot anger as any man. But to be successful, one would
need access to both sorts. .

Lift survived, but Manek did not. The icicle that Elphaba trained her
gaze on, thinking on the weapons one needed to fight such abuse-it broke
like a lance from the eaves, and drove whistling downward, and caught
him in the skull as he went out to find some new way of beleaguering Liir.



Uprisings
---------

1
______
They're calling you a witch, do you know that?" said Nanny. "Now why
ever is that?"

"Silliness and stupidity," said Flphaba. "When I arrived I was distanced
from my name, after my years at the mauntery, where I was called Sister
Saint Aelphaba. Elphaba seemed like the name of someone long ago. I told
them to call rue Auntie. Though I never felt like anyone's Auntie, nor
would I know what it felt like. I never had any aunts or uncles."

"Hmmm," said Nanny, "I don't think you're much of a witch. Your mother
would be scandalized, bless her soul. Your father too."

They were walking in the apple orchard. A cloud of blossoms thickened
the air with scent. The Witch's bees were having a field day, humming
throatily. Killyjoy sat wagging his tail in the shadow of Manek's
tombstone, placed near the wall. The crows had relay races overhead,
scaring away all other birds except the eagles. Irji and Nor and Liir,
at Nanny's insistence, had been taken into the schoolroom of the
village. Kiamo Ko was blissfully quiet until midday.

Nanny was seventy-eight. She walked with a cane. She hadn't given up on
her little efforts toward beauty, though now they seemed to coarsen
rather than dignify her. Her powder was on too thick, her lip rouge
smeared and off center, and the flimsy lace shawl was useless in the
updraft from the valley. For her part, Nanny thought that Elphaba was
looking poorly, as if she were going moldy from the inside out. Pale. A
disintegration of sorts. Elphaba didn't seem to care for her beautiful
hair at all, keeping it knotted up out of sight underneath that
ridiculous hat. And the black gown needed a good washing and airing.

They stopped at a lopsided wall, and leaned against it. The sisters were
gathering flowers a few fields away, and Sarima ballooned along. In her
dark mourning gown she resembled a huge dangerous cocoon broken loose
from its mooring. It was good to hear her laugh again, even if falsely;
light had that strange, ameliorative effect on everybody, even Elphaba.

Nanny had told Elphie about her family. The Eminent Thropp had died at
last. In Elphaba's absence and presumed death, the mantle of Eminence
had fallen to Nessarose. So the younger sister was now ensconced in
Colwen Grounds, issuing dogmatIc statements about faith and blame. Frex
was there with her too, his career of ministry almost at an end. As he
gave up the effort his mind was returning to balance. Shell? He came and
went. Rumors abounded that he was an agitator for Munchkinland's
secession from Oz. He had grown up handsome and fine, in Nanny's biased
opinion: straight of limb, clear of skin, direct of speech, bold of
heart. He was now in his early twenties.

"And what does Nessarose think of secession?" Elphie had asked. "Her
opinion about it will be important if she's the Eminent Thropp now."

Nanny reported that Nessarose had grown to be far cleverer than anyone
anticipated. She kept her cards close to her chest and issued vague
statements about the revolutionary cause, statements that could be read
several ways, depending on the audience. Nanny assumed Nessarose
intended to set up some sort of theocracy, incorporating into the
governing laws of Munchkinland her own restrictive interpretation of
unionism. "Your sainted father Frex himself doesn't know if this would
be a good or bad thing, and keeps silent on the matter. He's not much
for politics, he prefers the mystical realm." There was, Nanny observed,
even some local support for Nessarose's plans. But since Nessarose
governed her remarks well, the Wizard's armed forces garrisoned in the
area could find no excuse to arrest her. "She's adept at this," Nanny
admitted. "Shiz taught her well. She stands on her own two feet now."

The word adept sent chills down Elphie's spine. Was Nessarose even now
responding to some sort of spell that Madame Morrible had placed on her,
those foggy years ago in the parlor at Crage Hall? Was she in fact a
pawn, an Adept of the Wizard, or of Madame Morrible? Did she know why
she did what she did? For that matter, was Elphaba herself merely a
playing piece of a higher, evil power?

The recollection of Madame Morrible's proposals for their careers-hers,
and Nessarose's, and Glinda's-had come back to Elphie with a shock
following the recovery of Liir from his saturation and near drowning
last winter. When he finally came around enough to answer questions
about how he had come to be in the fishwell, he could only say "The fish
talked to me, she told me to come down." Elphie knew in her heart that
it was Manek, horrible evil Manek, who had tortured the boy unmercifully
and openly all winter. She didn't care that Manek died, even if Manek
was the precious son of Fiyero. Any torturer was fair game for javelin
icicles. But she had to pause, gulping, at what Liir had said next. He
said, "The fish told me she was magic. She said that Fiyero was my
father, and that Iiji and Manek and Nor are my brothers and my sister."

"Goldfish don't talk, sweetheart!" Sarlma said. "You're imagining
things. You were down there too long and your brain got waterlogged."

Elphaba had yearned toward Liir, a strange, unhappy compulsion. Who was
this boy who lived in her life? Oh, she knew more or less where he came
from, but who he was-it seemed to make a difference, for the first time
in her life. She had reached out and put her hand on his shoulder. He
had twitched it off; he was not used to such a gesture. And she had felt
rebuffed.

"Want to see my pet mouse, Lift?" said Nor, who had been warm to the boy
during his convalescence. Lift always chose the company of his peers
over questioning by the grown-ups, and it was impossible to pry further
information out of him about his ordeal. He didn't seem much changed,
except that with Manek dead, Liir charged around Kiamo Ko with greater
zest and liberty.

And Sarima had looked at Elphaba, and Elphaba thought the hour of her
liberation was at hand at last. "How silly of the boy, he's delusional,"
Sarima had said at last. "The idea of Fiyero being his father. Fiyero
didn't have an ounce of fat on his body, and look at the boy."

Under the terms of her welcome, Elphaba could not prod Sarima to change
her mind, but she stared at her hostess, willing her to accept the
facts. But she wouldn't. "And whoever might the mother be?" said Sarima
blandly, touching the hem of her skirt softly. "It's preposterous beyond
words."

For the first time, Elphie wished that Liir had at least an undertone of
green in his skin.

Sarima had swept away, to weep in her chapel for her husband, for her
second son.

And the terms of Elphie's imprisonment-as an unwilling traitor, as an
exiled maunt, as a hapless mother, as a failed insurrectionist, as a
Witch in disguise-remained unchanged.

Though the idea of a Goldfish or a Carp in the fishwell telling such
things to LAir-was there any possibility in that? Or had Madame Morrible
the ability to change her shape, to live in cold darkness, to slip in
and observe what Elphie was up to? Liir had no imaginatIon to speak of,
he couldn't have come up with that by himself. Could he?

When she went to look in the fishwell, many times at all hours of the
day or night, the old carp-or Carp-stayed out of sight.

"I'm glad to hear Nessarose is on her two feet," said Elphaba at last,
coming back to the orchard from her musings. Nanny was gnawing at a
piece of sugar candy.

"I mean that literally, you know," said Nanny through her spittle. "She
doesn't need to be propped up anymore. Not figuratively or literally.
She can stand on her own, stand and sit."

"Without benefit of arms? I don't believe it," said the Witch.

"You'll have to. Do you remember that pair of shoes that Frex had
decorated for her?"

Of course Elphaba remembered! The beautiful shoes! Her father's sign of
devotion to his second daughter, his desire to accentuate her beauty and
draw attention away from her deformity.

"Well, old Glirida of the Arduennas, remember her? Married to Sir
Chuifrey, and gone a bit to seed, in my humble opinion. She came to
Colwen Grounds a couple of years ago. She and Nessarose had a wild old
time, remembering college days. And she put those very same shoes
through something of an enchantment. Don't ask me. Magic was never my
cup of tea. The shoes allowed Nessarose to sit and stand and walk
without support. She is never without them. She claims they give her
moral virtue too, but then she has buckets more of that than she needs.
You'd be surprised how superstitious Munchkinlanders have become these
days." Nanny sighed. "That's why I was free to look you up, deane.

The magic shoes made me redundant. Nanny is out of a job."

"You're too old to work, you sit and enjoy the sun," said Elphaba. "You
can stay here as long as you like."

"You talk as if this is your house," said Nanny. "As if you have the
right to issue such invitations."

"Until I'm allowed to leave, this is my house," said Elphie. "I can't
help it."

Nanny shaded her eyes and looked out over the mountains, which in the
midday light looked like polished horn. "It's too rich, to think of you
being a Witch, after a fashion anyway, and your sister trying out as
resident Saint. Who would have thought, back in those muddy years in the
Quadling badlands? I don't think you're a Witch, whatever you say. But
one thing I do want to know. Is Liir your son?"

Elphaba shivered, though her heart, deep inside its pocket of cold,
roiled in hot energy. "It is not a question I can answer," she said sadly.

"You needn't keep anything from me, deane. Remember, Nanny was nursemaid
to your mother too, and a more outgoing, sensual woman I have yet to
meet. Convention didn't bind her, not in youth nor in married life."

"I don't think I want to hear about this," said Elphie.

"Then let's talk about Liir. What in blazes can you mean, you can't
answer a simple question like that? Either you conceived him and bore
him, or you didn't. As far as I know in this world there are no other
stories."

"What I mean," said Elphaba "and the only remark about it I will ever
make is this. When I first went to the mauntery, under the kind offices
of Mother Yackle, I was in no state to know what was happening to me,
and I spent about a year in a deathly sleep. It's just possible I
brought a child to term and delivered it. I was another full year
recovering. When I was first assigned duties, I worked with the sick and
the dying, and also with abandoned children. I had no more congress with
LAir than with any other of several dozen brats. When I left the
mauntery to come here, it was under the condition that I would take Liir
with me. I didn't question the instruction-one doesn't question the
instructions of superiors. I have no motherly warmth toward the boy"-she
gulped, in case this was no longer true-"and I don't feel as if I've
ever gone through the experience of bearing a child. I don't quite
believe myself

capable, in fact, although I'm willing to concede that this may be
simply ignorance and blindness. But that's all there is to say about it.
I'll say no more, and no more will you."

"Have you an obligation to be motherly to him then, despite the mystery?"

"The only other obligations I'm under are the ones I assign to myself
And that, Nanny, is that."

"You arc too tart, this situation makes you unhappy. But if you think I
came here to raise yet another generation of Thropps, forget it. Nanny
is in her senility now, remember, and happily so."

But Elphaba couldn't help noting that in the weeks that followed, Nanny
began to attend to Liir's needs more lovingly than she did the needs of
Nor and Irji. Liphaba registered it with shame, for she also saw how
willingly Lift responded to Nanny's attention.


In telling tales of Shell's derring-do-her racy old heart
pitter-pattering almost visibly beneath her breastbone-Nanny revealed
details of the Wizard's campaigns. It made Elphaba furious, for she had
kept hoping to lose interest in the ways of evil men.

Nanny buzzed on about the Wizard's having mounted a new kind of youth
camp, the Emperor's Garden-a pretty, euphemistic name. All
Munchkinlander children from four to ten were required to attend, in
month-long summer residencies. The children were sworn to secrecy-a
great game for them, no doubt. Nanny told a long-winded tale, more
suited to toothless cronies in a fireside inglenook than to a dinner
table with upright and repressed Arjiki spinsters, of how Shell, dear
stranger brother Shell, disguised himself as a potato man doing
deliveries. And got in the gates. Oh la, the many amusing adventures of
a rake! The Camp General's nubile daughter in deshabille, Shell's
inventive alibis, his dalliances, his narrow escapes! Almost being
discovered at his liaisons-by children! What a lark! Nanny remained a
mouthy old peasant at heart despite her airs. Elphaba thought: She
hardly comprehends she is talking about indoctrination, betrayal, forced
conscription of children into lowlevel warfare. With Elphie's newfound
awareness of Liir hovering at the edges of her life, bumbling gently
through her days, she found these tales of indoctrinated children
horrifying and repugnant.

She went to the Grimmerie and hauled open its massive cover- leather
ornamented with golden hasps and pins, and tooled with silver leaf-and
pored through the tome to find what makes people thirst for such
authority and muscle. Is it the sheer nature of the beast within, the
human animal inside the Human Being?

She looked for a recipe for the overthrow of a regime. She found much on
power, and damage, but little on strategy.

The Grimmerie described poisoning the lips of goblets, charming the
steps of a staircase to buckle, agitating a monarch's favorite lapdog to
make a fatal bite in an unwelcome direction. It suggested the nocturnal
insertion, through any convenient orifice, of a fiendish invention, a
thread like a piano wire, part tapeworm and part burning fuse, for a
particularly painful demise. All of this seemed carnival sleight of hand
to Elphaba. What was more interesting, in her reading, was a small
drawing she saw next to a section marked Evil Particulars. The
drawing-done, if you would believe gullible Sarima, in some world other
than theirs-was a clever sketch of a broad-faced woman-fiend. Written in
an angular, bronchiating script with elegant tapering serfs, all around
the illustration, were the words YAKAL SNARLING. Liphaba looked again.
She saw a creature part woman, part grassland jackal, its jaws open, its
hand-paw lifted to rip the heart out of a spiderweb. And the creature
reminded her of old Mother Yackle from the mauntery.

Conspiracy theories, as Sarima had said, seemed to bedevil her thinking.
She turned the page.

Nothing in the Grimmerie on how to depose a tyrant-nothing useful.
Armies of holy angels were not answerable to her. Nothing there that
described why men and women could turn out so horrible. Or so
wonderful-if that ever happened anymore.


2
______
In truth, the family was devastated over Manek's death. There was an
unspoken feeling, that somehow Liir's life had been saved at the expense
of Manek's. The sisters suffered from that most dreadful of losses: the
theft of the adult Manek from their lives. Their sad lot had been
bearable all these years because Manek was going to be the man

Fiyero had been, and maybe more. They realized in retrospect that they
had expected Manek to restore the fallen fortunes of Kiamo Ko.

Feckless liji had no more sense of destiny than a prairie dog. And Nor
was a girl, more ffighty and distractible than usual. So Sarima, behind
her gestures of ecstatic acceptance of life (its joys, its sorrows, its
mysteries, as she was fond of elaborating), became more aloof Never
close to her sisters, she began to take her meals alone in the Solar.

Irji and Nor, who had enjoyed a sort of allegiance from time to time
against the headstrong malice of Manek, had less to bind them together
now. Irji began to moon about in the old unionist chapel, teaching
himself to read better by scrutinizing moldy hymnals and breviaries. Nor
didn't like the chapel-she thought the ghost of Manek lingered there, as
that was the last place she had seen his body in the unwrapped shroud-so
she tried to ingratiate herself with Auntie Witch-but to no avail. "You
are out to make mischief with Chistery," snapped Elphie, "and I've work
to do. Go bother someone else." She aimed a kick at Nor, who, whimpering
and screaming as if it had hit home, left in a funk.

Nor took to wandering-now that the summer was coming in- down the high
valley, the one with the stream at its bottom-and up the other side,
where the sheep were nibbling on the best grass they would get all year.
In previous years she would either have been with her brothers, or she
would have been forbidden to go climbing alone. This year no one was
paying enough attention to her to forbid it. She wouldn't have minded
being forbidden, she wouldn't have minded the strap even. She was lonely.

One day she wandered particularly far down the valley, luxuriating in
the strength and endurance of her strong legs. She was only ten, but a
strapping, mature ten. She had hiked her green skirt up into her belt,
and because the sun was high and strong, she had shucked off her blouse
and tied it like a bandanna around her head. She hardly had a swelling
here or there on her chest with which to startle any sheep, and anyway
she expected to be able to spot a shepherd from miles away.

How in the world did I come to be here, of all places in Oz, she asked
herself, freshly treading upon the terrain of reflection. Here I am, a
girl on a mountain, nothing but wind and sheep and grass like an emerald
brushfire, green and golden as Lurlinemas decorations, silky in the
updraft, coarse in the downdraft. Just me and the sun and the wind. And

that group of soldiers coming out from behind the rock.

She slid down onto her back in the grass, fixed up her blouse, and
raised herself to her elbows, hiding.

They were not soldiers such as she had seen before. They were not Arjiki
men in their ceremonial brasses and helmets, with theft spears and
shields. These were men in brown uniforms and caps, with muskets or
something slung over their shoulders. They were wearing a kind of boot
rather high and inappropriate for hill walking, and when one of them had
stopped and was fiddling with a nail or a stone in his boot, his arm dis
appeared inside it right up to his elbow.

There was a green stripe down the front of their uniforms, and a bar
across it, and Nor felt cold with an unfamiliar sense of anticipation.
At the same time she wanted to be seen. What would Manek have done? she
asked herself. Irji would run, Liir would puzzle and dither, but Manek?
Manek would have marched right up to them and found out what was going on.

And so would she. She checked once again to make sure her buttons were
done up, and then she strode down the slope toward them. By the time she
had got all their attention, and the man with the boot off had slipped
It back on, she was beginning to rethink the wisdom of the plan. But it
was too late to run away now.

"Hail," she said in a formal way, using the language of the east, not
her own AijikI vernacular. "Hail, and halt. I am the Princess Daughter
of the Arjikis, and this is my valley you are marching your big black
boots along."

It was broad noon when she delivered them into the castle keep of Kiamo
Ko. The sisters were in their summer laundry yard, beating carpets
themselves because they didn't trust the local scrubwives to treat them
respectfully enough. The sound of boots on cobbles brought the sisters
running through an archway, all flushed and dusty, hair wrapped in
cotton scarves. Elphaba heard the noise, too, and threw her window open
and stared. "Not an inch farther until I come down," she called, "or
I'll turn you all to rodents. Nor, come away from them. All of you, come
away."

"I shall fetch the Dowager Princess," said Two, "if it please you
gentiemen."


But by the time Sarima arrived, drowsy from a nap, Elphaba had

descended, her broom over her shoulder, her eyebrows up to her scalp.
"You have no invitation here," said Elphie, looking more like a Witch
than ever in her mauntish skirts, "so just how welcome would you like to
be made? Who is in charge here? You? Who's the senior one leads this
mission? You?"

"If you please, Madame," said someone, a strapping Gillikinese man of
about thirty. "I am the Commander-the name is Cherrystone-and I'm under
the Emperor's orders to requisition a house large enough to shelter our
party while we are in this district of the Kells. We are doing a survey
of the passes to the Thousand Year Grasslands." He produced a
sweat-stained document from inside his shirt.

"I found them, Auntie Witch," said Nor proudly.

"Go away. Go inside," said Elphaba to the girl. "You men aren't welcome
here and the girl has no right to invite you. Turn around and march
yourself out over that drawbridge at once." Nor's face fell.

"This is not a request, it is an order," said Commander Cherrystone in
an apologetic tone.

"This isn't a suggestion, it's a warning," said Elphaba. "Go, or suffer
the consequences."

Sarima by now had taken in enough to step forward, her sisters buzzing
in a thrill around her. "Auntie Guest," she said, "you forget the code
of the mountains, the same code by which you came to lodge here, and
your old Nanny after you. We do not turn visitors away. Please, sirs,
excuse our excitable friend. And excuse us. It has been some time since
we saw soldiers in uniform."

The sisters were primping away as best they could at such short notice.

"I won't have it, Sarima," Elphaba said, "you've never been out of here,
you don't know who these men are or what they will do! I won't have it,
do you hear?"

"It's the high spirits, the determination, it makes her so much fun to
have around," said Sarima a trifle meanly, as in general she really did
enjoy Elphaba's company. But she did not like having her authority
usurped. "Gentlemen, this way. I'll show you where you can wash up."


Irji wasn't sure what to make of military men, and wouldn't go very
near. Whether he was afraid of being conscripted or enchanted he
couldn't say.

He dragged a sleeping roll down into the chapel and slept there, now
that it was warm enough. It was Nanny's opinion he was going weird.
"Believe me, after a life looking after your dear mother's devout
husband, Frex, and your sister after that, I know a religious lunatic
when I see one," she said to Elphaba. "That boy ought to be taking some
lessons from these men in manliness, whatever else is going on here."

On the other hand, Liir was in heaven. He followed Commander Cherrystone
around unless he was turned back, and he fetched water for the men and
polished their boots, in a surfeit of ill-concealed romance. The
tramping they did, reconnoitering about the local valleys, mapping the
places to ford the river, pinpointing spots for beacons, gave Liir more
exercise and fresh air than he had ever had before. His spine, which had
threatened to become curved like the arc of a mountain harp, seemed to
straighten out. The soldiers were indifferent to him, but they were not
manifestly unkind, and LAir took this as approval and fondness.

The sisters regained some sense when they stopped to consider what class
of men would go into the army. But it wasn't easy.

Sarima alone seemed unperturbed by the disturbance to theft routine. She
cast about among the villagers and called in favors to help her feed the
host of soldiers, and in mixed resentment and fear her neighbors came up
with milk, eggs, cheese, and vegetables. There was stouch or garmot from
the fishwell almost every evening. And the summer game, of course-
quail, bill pfenix, baby roe-which the men proved a dab hand at bringing
in themselves. Nanny suspected that the reconnaissance team was helping
Sarima over her grief, bringing her back to the family table at least.

But Elphaba was furious at them all. She and the Commander had words
every day. Elphie forbade him to allow Liir to tag along-and she forbade
Liir himself-to absolutely no effect. Her first true motherly feelings
were of incompetence and of being blithely ignored as inconsequential.
She could not understand how the human race had ever managed to develop
past a single generation. She continually wanted to strangle Liir, as a
means of saving him from smooth-talking father figures.

As Elphie tried harder to ferret out the nature of his mission, with
every sidestepping pleasantry Commander Cherrystone grew more icy and
polite. The one thing Elphaba had never been able to manage was a parlor
manner, and this soldier-of all people-was a master at it. It

made her feel as she had felt among the society girls at Crage Hall.
"Pay those soldiers no mind, they'll go away eventually," said Nanny,
who was at the time of her life when everything was either the final
fatal crisis or a dismissible matter indeed.

"Sarima says that she has rarely seen any of the Wizard's forces in the
Vinkus. This was always arid, lifeless, of little interest to the
farmers and merchants of northern and eastern Oz. The tribes have lived
here for decades, centuries I suppose, with nothing but the occasional
cartographer passing through and beating a quick retreat. Don't you
think this suggests some sort of campaign in these parts? What else can
it suggest?"

"Look at how long it has taken these young men to recuperate from their
overland trek," said Nanny. "This is surely just a reconnaissance
mission, as they say. They'll get their information and then leave.
Besides, everyone is always telling me, the whole damn place is swamped
in snow or mud for two thirds of the year. You're a worrier, you always
were. The way you gripped the Quadlings we used to proselytize, as if
they were your own private dolls! How you went on when they were
relocated or whatever! It used to trouble your mother no end, believe me."

"It's been well documented that the Quadlings were being exterminated,
and we were witnesses," said Elphaba strictly. "You too, Nanny."

"I look after my young, I can't look after the world," said Nanny,
quaffing a cup of tea and scratching Killyjoy's nose. "I look after
Liir, which is more than you do."

Elphaba didn't think it worth her while to lambaste the old biddy. She
ffipped through the Gnmmerie again, trying to find some small spell of
binding with which she could close the castle gates against the men. She
wished she had at least sat in on Miss Greyling's class in magic at school.

"Of course your mother was worried about you, she always was," said
Nanny. "You were such an odd little thing. And the trials that poor
woman had! You remind me of her now, only you're more rigid than she
was. She could really let her hair down. Do you know, she was so upset
with having you be a girl-she was so convinced you'd be a boy-she sent
me to the Emerald City to find an elixir to ensure But Nanny stopped,
muddled. "Or was that elixir to prevent her next child from being born
green? Yes, that was it."

"Why did she want me to be a boy?" said Elphaba. "I would have

obliged her if I'd had a say in the matter. Not to be simplistic, but it
always made me feel horrible, to know how I'd disappointed her so early
on. Not to mention the looks."

"Oh, don't credit her with nasty motives," said Nanny. She eased her
shoes off and rubbed the backs of her feet with her cane. "Melena had
hated her life at Colwen Grounds, you know. That's why she contrived to
fall in love with Frex and get out of there. Her grandfather the Eminent
Thropp had made it all too clear that she would inherit the title. The
Munchkinlander title descends through the female line unless there are
no daughters. The family seat, and all its attendant responsibilities,
would go from him, to Lady Partra, to Melena, and then to the first
daughter Melena had. She was hoping to have only sons, to keep them out
of that place."

"She always talked about it so lovingly!" said Elphaba, astounded.

"Oh, everything is gorgeous once it's gone. But for a young person,
trained up in all that wealth and responsibility-well, she hated it. She
revolted by having sex early and often, with anyone who would oblige,
and she as good as ran off with Frex, who was the first suitor she had
who loved her for herself and not her position and inheritance. She
thought a daughter of hers would find it equally deadly, so she wanted
sons."

"But that makes no sense. If she had sons and no daughters, then her
oldest son would inherit. If I'd been a boy without sisters, I'd still
have been stuck in the same mess."

"Not necessarily," said Nanny. "Your mother had one older sister, who
was born with a permanent case of overwrought nerves, maybe also lacking
in the brains department. She was housed off-grounds. But she was old
enough to breed, and healthy enough, and was just as likely to bear a
daughter. If she had borne a daughter first, her daughter would have
inherited the title of Eminence, and the estate and fortunes with it."

"So I have a mad aunt," said the Witch. "Maybe madness runs in the
family. Where is she now?"

"Died of the flu when you were still a small child, and left no issue.
So Melena's hopes were dashed. But that was her thinking, back in those
brash, brave days of youthful blunder."

Elphaba had few memories of her mother, and they were warm, sometimes
searing. "But what's this about her taking medicine to prevent Nessarose
from being born green?"

"I got her some tablets in the Emerald City, from some gypsy woman,"
said Nanny. "I explained to the beastly creature what had happened-I
mean that you'd been born an unfortunate color, and those teeth-thank
Lurline your second set were more human!-and the gypsy woman made some
silly prophecy about two sisters being instrumental in the history of
Oz. She gave me some powerful pills. I've always wondered if the pills
were the cause of Nessarose's affliction. I wouldn't mess with gypsy
potions anymore, believe me. Not with what we know these days." She
smiled, having long ago forgiven herself of any culpability in the whole
affair.

"Nessarose's affliction," mused Elphaba. "Our mother took some gypsy
remedy, and bore a second daughter without arms. It was either green or
armless. Mama didn't have very good luck at girls, did she."

"Shell, however, is a sight for sore eyes," said Nanny rosily. "Then,
who is to say it was all your mother's fault? First there was the
confusion about who was really Nessarose's father, and then the pills
from that old Yacide person, and your father's moodiness-"

"Yackle person? What do you mean?" asked Elphaba, starting. "And who the
hell was Nessarose's father if it wasn't Papa?"

"Oh la," said Nanny, "pour me another cup of tea and I'll tell you all.
You're old enough now, and Melena's long dead." She meandered through a
story about the Quadling glassblower named Turtle Heart, and Melena's
uncertainty whether Nessarose was his child or Frex's, and the visit to
Yackle, about whom she could remember nothing else but the name, the
pills, and the prophecy, can't pull teeth from a hen so stop trying. She
didn't mention (and she never had) how depressed Melena became when
Elphaba was born. There was no point.

Elphie listened to all this, impatient and annoyed. On the one hand she
wanted to throw it out the window: The past was immaterial. On the
other, things fell into a slightly different order now. And that Yackle!
Was the name just a coincidence? She was tempted to show Nanny the
picture of Yakal Snarling in the Grimmerie, but resisted. No sense
alarming the old woman, or giving her the nighttime frights.

So the two women poured each other tea and restrained themselves from
painful observations about the past. But Elphaba began to fret about
Nessarose. Perhaps Nessie didn't want the position of Eminence, and was

just as incarcerated there as her older sister was here. Perhaps Elphaba
owed her the chance of liberty. Yet how much really could you owe other
people? Was it endless?


3
______
Nor was beside herself. In a short time her whole life had changed, so
utterly. The world was more magic than ever, but it seemed lodged inside
her now, not outside. Her body was waiting to flame, to blossom, and no
one seemed to care or to notice.

Liir had become a water boy for the expeditionary soldiers. Irji spent
his time composing long devotional libretti in honor of Lurlina. In a
state of uncertainty over the men in residence, the sisters remained
confined to theft chambers by their own inclination, yet quivering with
readiness should things change. Nothing could change, as convention
dictated, unless Sarima married again, and then they would be free to
court. Their domestic campaigns to throw Commander Cherrystone and
Sarima together, however, met with no success. They redoubled their
efforts. Three even approached Auntie Witch for a love potion from that
magic encyclopedia. "Hah," said Elphaba, "that'll be the day," and that
was that about that.

Nor, bereft of companionship, took to hanging around the men's
dormitory, trying to pitch in with chores that Liir wasn't asked to do,
that men didn't much care about. She hung out theft cloaks in the sun.
She polished their buttons. She brought them flowers from the hills. She
prepared a tray of summer fruits and cheeses that seemed to please them,
especially when she served them herself One young, dark, balding soldier
with a captivating smile liked her to pop the orange segments right in
his lips, and he sucked the juice from her fingers, to the mingled
enjoyment and envy of the others. "Sit on my lap," he said, "and let me
feed you." He offered her a strawberry, but she wouldn't sit on his
lap-and she loved refusing.

One day she decided to treat them to a full-scale chamber cleaning. They
were out doing an inventory of the vineyards on the lower slopes and
would be gone all day. Nor arrayed herself with rags, yoked herself

with buckets, and since Auntie Witch was deep in conversation with Nanny
about, it seemed, Sarima, Nor swiped the Witch's broom, for its thicker
brush and longer handle. She headed to the barracks.

She couldn't read much, so she ignored the letters and maps that spilled
from the leathern satchels left carelessly slung over the back of a
chair. She tidied the trunks, and swept, and in the effort raised a lot
of dust, and felt warm.

She took off her blouse, and slung one of the men's rough capes over her
sun-browned shoulders. It gave off such a heady aroma of maleness, even
after its airing, that she nearly swooned. She lay down on someone's
pallet with the cape just slightly falling open, so that she could
imagine falling asleep and having the men return and see the beautiful
line of flat skin that ran between her fresh new breasts. She considered
pretending to fall asleep. But she knew she wouldn't do this. She sat
up, dissatisfied with the possibilities, and reached out to grab the
nearest thing-it happened to be the broom-so she could whack something
in frustration.

The broom was out of reach, but it lunged a little toward her. It came
across the floor of its own accord. She saw it. The broom was magic.

She touched it, almost fearfully, as if she guessed it had intentions.
It felt no different from an ordinary broom. It merely moved, as if
guided by the hand of an invisible spirit. "What tree are you whittled
from, what field are you mown from?" she asked it, almost tenderly, but
she expected no answer and she got none. The broom quivered, and
elevated itself a little off the floor, as if waiting.

The cape had a hood on it, and she drew this up over her face. Then she
hiked her summer skirt to her knees, and threw one leg over the broom,
to ride it as a child rides a hobby horse.

The thing rose, tentatively, so she could keep her balance by trailing
her toes on the floor, correcting, correcting-the center of gravity was
high, and the span was so narrow. The top of the handle tilted farther
up, and she slid down the shaft until she was caught against the brush
top, as if it were a saddle of sorts. She held on tightly; her legs,
especially in the upper thigh, felt as if they were swelling, the better
to clench the handle between them. The large window at the end of the
room hung open, for aft and light, and the broom moved a couple of feet
across the floor, until it had reached the sill.

Then the broom rose a few feet, and carried her out the window. Nor's
stomach pitched, and her heels beat against the underside of the brush.
Mercifully she had emerged not in the castle courtyard, where she would
likely be seen, but on the other side, where the land did not fall away
quite so far and fast. Nor wailed softly in the strangeness and ecstasy
of the adventure. The cape flared out, exposing her chest, and how could
she ever have imagined she wanted to be seen without a blouse? "Oh oh,"
she cried, but whether to the broom or to some guardian spirit, she did
not know. She shuddered with exposure and shock, and the broom rose
higher and higher, until it had come to a level with the uppermost
window, which was in the Witch's tower.

The Witch and her nanny were watching, open-mouthed, with cups of tea
halfway to their lips.

"You come down from there at once," ordered the Witch. Nor didn't know
if it was she who was being addressed, or the broom. She had no reins to
tug, no words of magic to wield. However the broom, apparently
chastened, turned back, descended, and made a somewhat clumsy landing on
the floor of the men's barracks. Nor flung herself off, weeping and
shivering, and reclothed herself properly. She didn't want to touch the
broom again, but when she picked it up the life had gone out of it, and
she carried it up to the Witch's apartments expecting a severe reprimand.

"What were you doing with my broom?" barked the Witch.

"I was cleaning the soldiers' quarters," gabbled Nor. "It's such a mess,
their papers all over, their clothes, their maps .

"Keep your hands off my things, you," said the Witch. "What kinds of
papers?"

"Plans, maps, letters, I don't know," said Nor, regaining her spunk, "go
look for yourself. I didn't pay attention."

The Witch took the broom and appeared to consider hitting Nor with it.
"Don't be a fool, Nor. Stay away from those men," she said coldly. "Stay
away from them!" She raised the broom like a truncheon.

"They'll hurt you as soon as spit at you. Stay away from them, I say.
And stay away from me!"


Elphaba remembered that the broom was given her by Mother Yackle. The
young woman had seen the old maunt as crippled, senile, a bother,

but now Elphaba looked back and wondered if there was more to her than
met the eye. Was that broom magicked by Mother Yackle, with a vestige of
some Kumbricial instinct? Or did Nor have a power developing in her, and
did she bring it out in the senseless broom? Nor apparently was a fervid
believer in magic; maybe the broom was waiting to be believed in. Would
it fly for Elphaba, too?

One night when everyone else had retired, Elphaba brought the broom out
to the courtyard. She felt a little foolish, crouching down on the broom
like a child on a hobbyhorse. "Come on, fly, you fool thing," she
muttered. The broom twitched back and forth in a naughty way, enough to
raise welts in her inner thighs. "I'm not a blushing schoolgirl, stop
that nonsense," said Elphaba. The broom rose a foot and a half and then
dumped Elphie on her rear end.

"I'll set you afire and that'll be the end of you," said Elphaba. "I'm
too old for this sort of indignity."

It took five or six nights of trying before she managed even to hover
six feet off the ground. She had been useless in sorcery. Was she doomed
to be useless at everything? It was a pleasure, finally, to scare the
barn owls and bats senseless. And it was good to be abroad. When she had
more confidence, she wobbled far down the valley to the remains of the
Ozma Regent's attempt at a dam; she rested and hoped that she wouldn't
have to walk back. She didn't. The broom was resistant to her intention,
but she could always threaten it with fire.

She felt like a night angel.


In midsummer, an Aijiki trader came along with pots and spoons and
spools of thread, and he carried with him some letters left at an
outpost farther north. Among them was a note from Frex-apparently Nanny
had told him of her intentions to hunt Elphaba down, and he wrote to the
mauntery, which had forwarded the letter on to Kiamo Ko in the Vinkus.
Frex wrote that Nessarose had orchestrated a revolt, and that
Munchkinland-or most of it anyway-had seceded from Oz, and set itself up
as an independent state.

Nessarose as the Eminent Thropp had become the political head of state.
Frex apparently thought this was Elphaba's birthright, and that she
should come to Colwen Grounds and challenge her sister for it. "It may

be she isn't the right woman for the job," he wrote, though Elphaba
found his apprehension surprising. Wasn't Nessarose the warmly spin-tual
daughter that Elphie could never be?

Elphaba had no thirst for leadership, and did not want to challenge
Nessarose in any way. But now that the broom seemed able to carry her
for long distances, she wondered if she could fly by night to Colwen
Grounds, and spend a few days seeing Papa, Nessie, and Shell once again.
It had been a dozen years since she left Nessie in Shiz, drunk and
sobbing following the death of Ama Clutch.

For Munchkinland to be free of the Wizard's iron grip!-that alone would
be worth the trip. It made Elphie grin a bit at herself, to feel her old
contempt for the Wizard flare up. Perhaps this was what healing meant,
after all.

To be safe, one afternoon Elphaba went through the soldiers' empty
barracks. She pawed through their papers. All the documents related to
issues of mapping and geological survey. Nothing else. There seemed to
be no hidden agenda of threat to the Arjikis or the other Vinkus tribes.

The earlier she went, the sooner she would return. And it would be
better if no one know. So she told everyone she was taking a period of
isolation in her tower, and she wanted neither food nor visitors for
some days. When midnight struck, she set out for Coiwen Grounds, now the
home of her powerful sister.


4
______
She slept by daylight in the shadows of barns, the overhang of eaves,
the lee of chimneys. She traveled by night. In the gloom, Oz spread out
below-she hovered above it at about eighty feet, near as she could
reckon-and the countryside made its geographical transformations with
the ease of a vaudeville backdrop on rollers. The hardest passage was
down the steep flanks of the Great Kells. Once free of the mountairis,
however, she saw Oz level out into the rich alluvial plain of the
Gillikin River.

She flew along the waterway, above trading vessels and islands, until it
fed at last into Restwater, Oz's largest lake. She kept to its southern
edge, and took a whole night to traverse it, as it endlessly lapped in black

oily silk waves, into sedge and swamp. She had trouble finding the mouth
of the Munchkin River, which drained into Restwater from the eastern
direction. Once she did, though, it was easy to locate the Yellow Brick
Road. The farmland beyond grew even more lush. The effects of the
drought, so drastic in her childhood, had been eradicated, and dairy
farms and small villages seemed to prosper, happy as a child's toy town
set, cunning and cozy in the wrinkled, nappy land of arabic soil and
accommodating climate.

The farther east she went, however, the more torn up the highway became.
Crowbars had pried out bricks, trees had been felled and brush walls
erected. It looked as if a few of the smaller bridges had been
dynamIted. A safeguard against retaliation by the Wizard's army?

Seven days after leaving her chambers at Kiamo Ko, Elphaba flew into the
hamlet of Colwen Grounds, and slept under a green bay tree. When she
awoke, she asked a merchant for the great house, and he tremblingly
pointed her the way, as if she were a demon. So a green skin still gives
Munchkinlanders the creeps, she observed, and walked the last couple of
miles, and arrived at the front gates of Colwen Grounds a little after
breakfast.

She had heard her mother speak of Colwen Grounds, wistfully and angrily,
as they had slopped in waterproof boots through six inches of Quadling
Country water. Elphie's years in the smug antiquity of Shiz, and the
pomp of the Emerald City, ought to have prepared her for an imposing
mansion. But she was startled, even shocked, at the grandeur of Colwen
Grounds.

The gate was gilded, the forecourt swept clean of every scrap of grass
and dung, and a bank of topiary saints in terra-cotta pots lined the
balcony above the massive front door. Dignitaries with ribbons denoting
new rank and prestige in the Free State of Munchkinland, she guessed,
stood in small groups to one side. Coffee cups in hand, the officials
had apparently just finished an early morning privy council meeting.
Inside the gate, swordsmen stepped neatly up and barred her way. She
began to protest-instantly branded a menace and a loon, she could
see-and she was about to be ejected when a figure wandered into view
from around the corner of a folly, and called for them to stop.

"Fabala!" he said.

"Yes, Papa, I'm here," she answered, with a child's politeness.

She turned. The dignitaries paused in their discussions, and then
resumed, as if realizing that overhearing this reunion would be the
height of rudeness. The guards withdrew their barrier when Frex
approached. His hair was thin and long and caught up by a rawhide
implement, as it always had been. His beard was the color of cream and
reached his waist when he took his hands away from it.

"This is the sister of the Eminence of the East," said Frex, staring at
Elphaba, "and my oldest daughter. Let her pass through, dear men, now
and every time she approaches." He reached and caught her hand, and
turned his head as a bird might to see her through one capable eye. The
other eye, she realized, was dead.

"Come, we will greet each other in private, away from this attention,"
said Frex. "My word, Fabala, you have become your mother in these long
years!" He linked his arm into hers, and they went Into the building
through a side door and found a small salon done up in saffron silks and
plum velvet cushions. The door closed behind them. Frex lowered himself
cautiously to the sofa and patted the upholstery next to him. She sat
down, wary, tired, astonished at the wealth of her own feeling for him.
She was full of need. But, she reminded herself, you're a grown woman.

"I knew you would come if I wrote," he said. "Fabala, I always knew
that." He wrapped her in his arms, stiffly. "I may cry for a minute."
When he was through, he asked her where she had gone, and what she had
done, and why she had never come back.

"I was not sure there was a back to come to," she answered, realizing
the truth of it as she spoke. "When you finished converting a town,
Papa, you moved on to new fields. Your home was in the pasture of souls;
mine never was. Besides, I had my own work to do." She added, a moment
later, in a low voice, "Or I thought I did."

She mentioned her years in the Emerald City, but did not say why.

"And was Nanny right? Were you a maunt? I didn't raise you for such
submission," he said. "I'm surprised. Such conformity and obedience-"

"I was no more a maunt than I ever was a unionist," she chided him
gently, "but I lived with the maunts. They did good work, whatever the

error or inspiration of their beliefs. It was a time of recuperation
from a difficult passage. And then, last year, I went to the Vinkus, and
I guess I've made my home there, although for how long I cannot say."

"And what do you do?" he said. "Are you married?"

"I'm a witch," she answered. He recoiled, peered through the working eye
to see if she spoke in jest.

"Tell me about Nessie before I see her, and Shell," she said. "Your
letter sounded as if you thought she needed help. I'll do what I can in
the short while I can be here."

He told her about her sister's rise to Eminence, and the secession in
the late spring. "Yes, yes, I know of it but not why," she said,
prodding. So he described the burning of a grange where opposition
meetings had been gathering, the reported rape of a couple of
Munchkinlander maidens following a cotillion of the Wizard's army
garrisoned near Dragon Cupboard. He mentioned the Massacre at Far
Applerue and the heavy taxation on farm crops. "The last straw," he
said, "as far as Nessie was concerned, anyway, was the callow despoiling
by the Wizard's soldiers of simple country meetinghouses."

"Unlikely last straw," said Elphaba. "Isn't the back room of a colliery
as holy a place to pray as a meetinghouse? I mean, according to teaching?"

"Well, teaching," said Frex. He shrugged; such distinctions were beyond
him now. "Nessie was incensed, and communicated her outrage, and before
she knew it the spark had been thrown out and the tinder caught. Within
a week of her firing off a furious letter to the Emperor Wizard
himself-a dangerous and seditious act-the revolutionary fever had
coalesced around her. It happened right here in the forecourt of Colwen
Grounds. It was magnificent, and you'd have guessed Nessie was groomed
for treason. She addressed the senior men among the farming communities
both near and far, and kept her religious agenda in check, sensibly, I
think. So her appeal for their support was overwhelmingly answered.
There was a unanimous approval for secession."

Papa's gone pragmatic in his old age, Elphaba observed with some surprise.

"But how did you slip through the border patrols?" he asked. "Things
being what they are-hotting up, as they say."

"I just flew right through, a little black bird at nighttime," she
answered, smiling at him, and touching his hand. It was glazed and
mottled pink, like a lake lobster on the boil. "But what I don't know,
Papa, is why you called me here. What do you expect me to do?"

"I had thought you might join your sister in her seat of authority," he
said, with the simple-minded hope of one whose family has been too long
apart. "I know who you are, Fabala. I doubt you have much changed over
the years. I know your cunning and your conviction. I also know that
Nessie is at the mercy of her religious voices, and she could slip and
undo the terrible good she is helping to create right now by being a
focal figure for resistance. If that happens, it will not go well for her."

So I am to be a whipping girl, thought Elphaba, I am to be a first line
of defense. Her pleasure evaporated.

"And it will not go well for them, the eager supporters," Frex said,
waving a hand to indicate most of Munchkinland. His face sagged-his
smile was an effort too, she thought coolly-and his shoulders fell.
"They have had more than a generation of gentle dictatorship from our
Glorious Wizard scoundrel-oh, even I forget, we're now in the Free State
of Munchkinland-these farmers surely underestimate the size of the
eventual retaliation. In fact, Shell has found from reliable sources
that the stockpiles of grain in the Emerald City are massive, and we can
be left for some time without needing to be overrun. Short of routing
some divisions of soldiers across the border, and jailing some drunken
hooligans, this has been a most genteel disengagement so far. We are
deluded into believing we are safe. I mean Nessie is deluded too, I
think. You, I have always felt, had a clearer mind about you. You can
help her prepare, you can provide the balance and the support."

"I always did that, Papa," she said. "In childhood and at college. Now I
am told she can stand up for herself"

"You've heard of my precious shoes," he said. "I bought them from a
decrepit crone, and then I retooled them for Nessa with my own hands,
using skills in glass and metal that I had once learned from Turtle
Heart. I made them to give her a sense of beauty, but I didn't expect
them to be enchanted by someone else. I am not sorry they are. But Nessa
now thinks she needs no one, to help her stand or help her govern. She
listens less than ever. In some ways I think those shoes are dangerous."

"I wish you had made them for me, Papa," she said in a quiet voice.

"You didn't need them. You had your voice, your intensity, even your
cruelty as your armor."

"My cruelty!" She reared back.

"Oh, you were a fiendish little thing," said Frex, "but so what,
children grow into and out of themselves. You were a terror when you
first were around other children. You only calmed down when we began to
travel and you got to hold the baby. It was Nessarose who tamed you, you
know. You have her to thank; she was holy and blessed even from the day
she was born. Even as an infant, she soothed your wildness with her
obvious need. You don't remember that, I suppose."

Elphie wasn't able to remember, she wasn't able to think about all that.
Even the idea of being cruel was slipping from her. Instead, she was
trying to feel fondness toward her father, despite the exhaustion of
being commandeered to be a second lieutenant once again, in service of
dear needy Nessarose. She concentrated on her father's concern for the
citizens of Munchkinland. Ever a pastoral sensibility, his. Though
rejecting his theology, she adored him for his commitment.

"I must hear more about Turtle Heart one day," she said in a light
voice, "but now, I suppose I should go greet my sister. And I will think
about what you say, Papa. I can't imagine being part of a governmental
troika, with you and Nessarose-or a committee, should Shell be involved
too. But I'll suspend judgment for a while. And Shell, Papa, how is he?"

"Behind enemy lines, so they say," Frex answered as she got up to leave.
"He is a foolhardy boy and will be among the first casualties, once this
really gets going. He resembles you in some ways."

"He's gone green?" she asked, amused.

"He's stubborn as sin stains," he answered.


Nessarose was secluded in an upstairs parlor, conducting her morning
meditation. Frex saw that Elphaba was given license to wander about the
house and demesne. After all, in another configuration of events,
Elphaba could have been (or could yet become) the Eminent Thropp, the
Eminence of the East, the nominated head of the Free State of
Munchkinland. Frex watched his green daughter amble down marble

:orridors, dragging her broom like a charwoman, gazing at the ormolu,
the damask, the fresh flowers, the servants in livery, the portraits. He
felt, as always, a twinge of pain deep in his breast, for the hidden and
unknowable things that he had done wrong in raising her. But he was glad
that she was here at last.

Elphaba found her way into a private chapel at the end of a hail of
poiished mahogany. It was baroque rather than ancient, and it was in the
midst of being redecorated. Nessarose must have ordered the frescoes to
be whitewashed; perhaps the succulent images would distract people from
theft meditative tasks. Elphie sat on a bench on the side, amidst
buckets of limestone wash and paintbrushes and ladders. She did not
pretend to pray, though she felt very uneasy about this whole thing. She
trained her gaze, to focus her mind, on a huge section still boasting
its images. It featured several rotund angels levitating with the aid of
sizable wings. Theft garments bad been cut to accommodate the anatomical
irregularity, she saw. They were rather full-bodied dames, but the wings
weren't bulging with straining arteries nor snapping at the tip. The
artist had considered the optimal length and breadth of wing required to
hoist ample ladies aloft. The formula looked to be about three times
wing length to the length of arm, corrected perhaps to account for the
portliness. If you could sweep your way to the Other Land on wings, what
about on a broom? she wondered. And realized she must be very tired;
usually she'd cut off senseless speculation about unionist nonsense like
an afterlife, a Beyond, an Other Land.

I should remember my lessons from that life sciences course, she
thought. All the devastating borders of knowledge Doctor Dillamond was
about to cross. I almost understood some of it. I could stitch wings
onto Chistery. He could join me in flight. What a lark.

She rose and went to find her sister.


Nessarose was less surprised to see Elphaba than Elphie would have
guessed. Perhaps, Elphie considered, it was because Nessa had become
used to being the center of attention. Then again, she had always been
the center of attention. "Darling Elphie," she said, looking up from a
pair of identical books some attendant had laid out, next to each other,
so she could read four pages without calling for someone to turn the
page. "Give us a kiss."

"Oh there, then," Elphie said, obliging. "How are you, Nessie? You look
fine."

Nessarose stood, in her beautiful shoes, and smiled brilliantly. "The
grace of the Unnamed God gives me strength, as ever," she said.

But Elphaba could not be annoyed. "You have risen, and I don't just mean
to your feet," she said. "History has chosen you for a role, and you've
accepted it. I'm proud of you."

"You needn't be proud," said Nessarose. "But thank you, dear. I thought
you'd probably come. Did Father drag you here to take care of me?"

"No one dragged me here, but Papa did write."

"So all those years in solitude, and political turmoil brings you out at
last. Where were you?"

"Here and there."

"You know we thought you'd died," said Nessarose. "Drape that shawl
around my shoulders and fix it with a pin, will you, so I needn't call a
maid? I mean that awful, awful time when you left me alone in 5hz. I am
still furious with you about it, I just remembered." She curled her lip,
prettily; Elphaba was glad to see she possessed at least a residual
sense of humor.

"We were all young then, and perhaps I was wrong," said Elphie. "It
didn't do you any lasting harm, anyway. At least not so I can see."

"I had to put up with Madame Morrible all by myself, for two more years.
Glinda was a help for a while, then she graduated and went on. Nanny was
my salvation, but she was old even then. She's gone on to you lately,
hasn't she? Well, back then I felt horribly alone. Only my faith saw me
through."

"Well, faith will do that," said Elphie, "if you've got it."

"You speak as one still living in the shadowland of doubt."

"In fact I think we have more important things to discuss than the state
of my soul or lack thereof You have a revolution on your hands- sorry, I
guess I've gotten out of the habit!-and you're the resident commander
general. Congratulations."

"Oh, tiresome events of the distracting world, yes yes," said Nessarose.
"Look, it's just beautiful out there in the gardens. Let's go walk for a
bit and get some air. You look green about the gills-"

"All right, I deserved that-"

"-and there's plenty of time to go into diplomatic matters. I have a
meeting in a little while, but there's time for a stroll. You should get
to know this place. Let me show it to you."


5
______
Elphaba could only get Nessarose's attention for small snatches of time.
However dismissive of the demands of leadership, Nessarose was
clearheaded about her schedule, and spent hours preparing for meetings.

And at first the discussion was frivolous-family memories, school days.
Elphie was impatient to get around to the meat of the matter here. But
Nessarose wouldn't be rushed. Sometimes she let Elphie sit in when she
held audiences with citizens. Elphie wasn't entirely pleased with what
she saw.

One afternoon an old woman from some hamlet in the Corn Basket came in.
She made obeisance in a most disgusting and obsequious manner, and
Nessarose seemed to shine back at her with glory. The woman complained
that she had a maid who, having fallen in love with a woodcutter, wanted
to leave her service to get married. But the old woman had already given
three sons to the new local militia for defense, and she and the maid
were all the labor available to bring in the crops. If the maid ran off
with her woodcutter, the crops would spoil and she would be ruined. "And
all for the sake of liberty," she concluded bitterly.

"Well, what do you want me to do about it?" said the Eminence of the East.

"I can give you two Sheep and a Cow," said the woman.

"I have livestock-" said Nessarose, but Elphaba interrupted and said,
"Did you say Sheep? A Cow? You mean Animals?"

"My very own Animals," the woman replied proudly.

"How do you come to own Animals?" Elphaba asked, her teeth clenched.
"Are Animals no more than chattel now in Munchkinland?"

"Elphie, please," said Nessarose quietly.

"What will you take to release them?" demanded Elphie, in a passion.

"I already said. Do something about this woodcutter."

"What do you have in mind?" interrupted Nessarose, displeased that her
sister was usurping her role as arbiter ofjustice.

"I brought you his axe. I thought you might bewitch it and cause it
tokill him."

"Fie," said Elphaba, but Nessarose said, "Oh well, that wouldn't be very
nice."

"Very nice?" Elphie said. "No indeed it wouldn't be very nice, Nessie."

"Well, you're the legal answer around here," said the old woman stoutly.
"What do you suggest?"

"I might bewitch his axe and let it slip," said Nessarose thoughtfully,
"just enough perhaps to cut off his arm. I know from experience that a
person without an arm isn't as desirable to the opposite sex as one
fully armed."

"Fair enough," said the woman, "but if it doesn't work I'll come back
and you'll do more, for the same price. Sheep and a Cow don't come cheap
around here, you know."

"Nessarose, you're not a witch, no, I don't believe it," said Elphie.
"You don't do spells, of all things!"

"The righteous person can work miracles in the honor of the Unnamed
God," said Nessarose calmly. "Show me that axe, if you've brought it."

The old woman held forward a woodcutter's axe, and Nessarose knelt down
near it, as if she were praying. It was an odd, even a frightening
thing, to see that narrow armless body able to lean forward, unaided and
off balance, and then, when the spell was through, able to right itself.
Those are some shoes, thought Elphie soberly, bitterly. Glinda has got
some power in her, for all her social dazzle, or maybe the power comes
from the love of our father for his Nessie. Or some combination. And if
Nessarose isn't pulling the wool over this old biddy's eyes, she's
become a sorceress too, by whatever name she chooses to call it.

"You are a witch," said Elphaba again; she couldn't help it. This
perhaps was a mistake, as the old woman was just thanking Nessarose for
her efforts. "I'll bring the Animals by the barn out back," she said.
"They're tethered in town."

"Animals! Tethered!" exclaimed Elphie, seething.

"Thank you, Miss Eminence," said the old woman. "The Eminence of the
East. Or should I call you the Witch of the East?" She grinned toothily,
having gotten her way, and went out the door carrying the enchanted axe
over her shoulder the way a strapping young lumberjack would do.


They weren't to be alone again for a while. Elphaba went prowling around
the stable and sheds until she found an attendant who could point her
toward the two Sheep and the Cow. They were in a pen with clean straw,
each one facing a different corner, chewing in abstraction.

"You're the new Animals, brought here by that old vengeful fiend," said
Elphaba. The Cow looked over as if unaccustomed to being addressed. The
Sheep made no sign of having understood.

"What's your beef?" said the Cow, in a dark humor.

"I've been living in the Vinkus," said Elphie. "There aren't many
Animals there. At one time I was an agitator in the Animal Rights
grassroots sweep-I don't really know how things stand for Munchkinlander
Animals now. What can you tell me?"

"I can tell you to mind your own business," said the Cow.

"And the Sheep?"

"These Sheep can tell you nothing, they've gone dumb."

"Are they-sheep? Does that happen?"

"They talk about humans becoming vegetables-or nuts-or even fruits,"
said the Cow, "but they don't mean it literally. Sheep don't become
sheep, they become mute Sheep. They don't really need to be discussed
here as if they're not listening, by the way."

"Of course. My apologies," she said to the Sheep, one of whom blinked
balefully. To the Cow she added, "I'd rather call you by your name."

"I've given up using my name in public," said the Cow. "It's not
afforded me any individual rights to have an individual name. I reserve
it for my private use."

"I understand that," said Elphaba. "I feel the same. I'm just the Witch
now."

"Her Eminence herself?" A gummy rope of spittle dropped from the Cow's
jaw. "I'm flattered. I didn't know you called yourself Witch, I thought
that was just a nasty backfield nickname. The Witch of the East."

"Well no. I'm her sister. I suppose I'm the Witch of the VVest, if you
will." She grinned. "In fact I didn't know she was so disliked."

The Cow had blundered. "Surely I meant no disregard to your family," she
said. "I should just keep my mouth closed and concentrate on my cud. The
thing is, I'm In shock-to be sold in exchange for a witch's spell!
There's nothing wrong with that woodcutter-oh I've got ears, I have,
though they forget-and the thought of a warmhearted simpleton like Nick
Chopper coming to harm through a witch's spell-and I part of the barter
cost-well, it's hard to imagine how much lower one could sink in life."

"I've come to free you," Elphie said.

"By whose authority?" The Cow snorted suspiciously.

"I told you, I'm the sister of the Eminent Thropp-the Eminence of the
East." She amended herself: "The Witch of the East. It's my prerogative
here."

"And free to go where? To do what?" said the Cow. "We'd get from here to
Lower Mucksiop and be roped in again. Subjected to slavery under the
Wizard, and catechisms under the Eminent Thropp! We don't exactly blend
in with those creepy little Munchkinlander humans."

"You're gone a bit dour," said Flphaba.

"Haven't you ever heard of a mad Cow?" she answered. "Sweetheart, my
udder is sore from their daily yanking. I am tapped for milk morning and
night. I won't even go into what it's like to be mounted by a-well, just
never mind. But worst, my children have been fattened on milk and
slaughtered for veal. I could hear their cries from the abattoir, they
didn't even bother to move me out of hearing range!" Here she turned her
head to the wall, and the Sheep came up on either side of her, pressing
like a living pair of warm bookends against her lower sides and underbelly.

Elphaba said, "I can't be sorrier or more ashamed. Look, I was working
with Doctor Dillamond-have you heard of him?-in Shiz, years ago. I went
to the Wizard himself to protest what was happening..

"Oh, the Wizard doesn't show himself to the likes of us," said the Cow,
after she had regained her composure. "I don't feel like talking
anymore. Everybody's on your side until they want something from you.
The Eminent Nessarose has probably brought us in order to impress us
into some religious ceremonial procession. My silken flanks tarted up
with garlands or the like. And we all know what happens next."

"Now you must be wrong in that," said the Witch. "I do object.

Nessarose is a strict unionist. They don't go in for-blood sacrifice-"

"Times change," said the Cow. "And she's got a population of ill-

educated, nervous subjects to pacify. What, pray tell, works better than
ritual slaughter?"

"But however could it come to this?" said the Witch. "Assuming you're
telling the truth? This is farming country. You ought to be well
established here."

"Animals in pens have lots of time to develop theories," said the Cow.
"I've heard more than one clever creature draw a connection between the
rise of tiktokism and the erosion of traditional Animal labor. We
weren't beasts of burden, but we were good reliable laborers. If we were
made redundant in the workforce, it was only a matter of time before
we'd be socially redundant too. Anyway, that's one theory. My own
feeling is that there is real evil abroad in the land. The Wizard sets
the standard for it, and the society follows suit like a bunch of sheep.
Forgive the slanderous reference," she said, nodding to her companions
in the pen. "It was a slip."

Elphaba threw open the gate of the pen. "Come on, you're free," she
said. "What you make of it is your own affair. If you turn it down, it's
on your own heads."

"It's on our own heads if we walk out, too. Do you think a Witch who
would charm an axe to dismember a human being would pause over a couple
of Sheep and an annoying old Cow?"

"But this might be your only chance!" Elphaba cried.

The Cow moved out, and the Sheep followed. "We'll be back," she said.
"This is an exercise in your education, not ours. Mark my words, my
rump'll be served up rare on your finest Dixxi House porcelain dinner
plates before the year is out." She mooed a last remark-"I hope you
choke"-and, tail swishing the flies, she meandered away.


6
______
An ambassador from the Glikkus, darling," Nessarose said, when Elphaba
demanded a meeting. "Really, I can't turn her away. She's come to
discuss mutual defense pacts in the event that the Glikkus

secedes next. She thinks there are agents trailing her family, and she
needs to leave on her return journey tonight. But we'll dine together,
just like old times? You, me, and my server?"

Elphaba had no choice but to while away another afternoon. She located
Frex and persuaded him to go for a stroll out beyond the ornamental
ponds and pristine lawns, where the woods came up to the back edge of
Colwen Grounds. He walked so stiffly, so slowly, it was torture; she was
a strider. But she kept herself in check.

"How do you find your sister?" he asked her. "After all these years?
Much changed?"

"She was always confident, in her way," Elphie said reservedly.

"I never thought so, and I don't now," Frex said. "But I think it was a
good act, and it's gotten better."

"What really did you ask me to come here for, Papa?" Elphaba said. "I
haven't much time, you know. You must be frank."

"You would make a smarter Eminence than Nessie," he said. "And it's your
birthright. Yes, I know the strict rules of title inheritance weren't
important to your mother. I just think that the people of Munch-kinland
would do better with you at the helm. Nessa is-too devout, if such a
thing exists. Too devout to be a central figure in public life, anyway."

"This may be the only respect in which I take after my mother," Elphaba
said, "but an inherited position is of no interest to me, and it carries
no weight at all that I'm the rightful Eminence. I've long ago abdicated
my position in the family in that respect. Nessarose has every right to
abdicate hers, and then Shell can be located to stand in. Or better yet,
the foolish custom can be abolished, and let the Munchkinlanders govern
themselves to death."

"Nobody ever suggested a leader isn't just as much a scapegoat as a
lowly peon," said Frex. "Anyway, it's possible. But I'm talking about
leadership, not about rank and privilege. I'm talking about the nature
of the times we live in, and the job that needs to be done. Fabala, you
were always the more capable sibling. Shell is a madcap cutup, currently
playing secret agent, and Nessie is a bruised little girl-"

"Oh please," she said in disgust. "Isn't it time to get over that?"

"She hasn't," he said, hurt. "Do you see her wrapped in some

lover's arms? Do you see her bearing her own children, engaging in life
in a way that makes sense? She hides behind her devotion the way a
terrorist hIdes behind his ideals-" He saw her ffinch at this, and paused.

"I have known terrorists capable of love," she said evenly, "and I have
known good maunts, unmarried and childless, doing charity for stricken
people."

"Have you known Nessa to have an adult bond with anyone other than the
Unnamed God?"

"You're one to talk," she said. "You had your wife and your children,
but they came lower on the order of priorities than Quadlings waiting to
be converted."

"I did what had to be done," he said rigidly. "I won't be lectured by my
daughter."

"Well, I won't be lectured by you about my everlasting duties to Nessie.
I gave her my childhood, I got her going at Shiz. She's made her life
the way she wants it, and she still has choice and free will even now.
And so do her subjects, who can depose her and cut off her head if her
prayers get in their way."

"She is a rather powerful woman," Frex said sadly. Elphie glanced
sideways at him, and for the first time she saw him as feckless-the kind
of old man that Irji, if he survived, would grow to be. Constantly
pawing at the edge of events, reacting instead of acting, mourning the
past and praying for the future instead of stirring up the present.

"How did she get so powerful?" she asked, trying to be kind. "She had
two good parents."

He didn't answer this.

They walked on and came out of the woods along the edge of a cornfield.
A couple of farmhands were repairing a fence and erecting a scarecrow.
"Afternoon, Brother Frexspar," they said, doffing theft caps. They
looked a little askance at Elphaba. When she and her father had
continued out of earshot, she said, "They were wearing a little talisman
or something on theft tunics, did you see it? It looked like a small
straw dolly or something."

"Oh yes, the straw man." He sighed. "Another pagan custom that had
almost gone underground, and then was revived during the Great Drought.
Ignorant field-workers wear a straw man as a charm against the pests of
crops: drought, crows, insects, rot. Once upon a time there was a

tradition of human sacrifice about it." He paused to catch his breath
and wipe his face. "Our family friend, Turtle Heart, the Quadling-he was
butchered right here in Coiwen Grounds, on the day that Nessarose was
born. An itinerant dwarf and a huge tiktok entertaining clock were
making the circuit that year, and providing a conduit for the ugliest of
human inclinations. We arrived here just in time for Turtle Heart to be
nabbed. I've never forgiven myself for not seeing what was about to
happen-but your mother was in her labor, and we'd been run out of town.
I wasn't thinking clearly enough all the way around things."

Elphaba had heard all this before-even so. "You were in love with him,"
she said, to make it easier.

"We both were, we shared him," said Frex. "Your mother and I did. It was
a lifetime ago and I don't know why anymore; I don't think I knew why
then. I haven't loved anyone else since your mother died, except of
course my children."

"\Vhat a brutal history of sacrifices," she said. "I was just talking to
a Cow who expects to be a blood victim. Is that possible?"

"The more civilized we become, the more horrendous our entertainments,"
said Frex.

"And it'll never change, or will it? I remember the etymology of the
word Oz, at least as proposed at a lecture by our Head, Madame Morrible.
She said that academics were inclined to locate the root of the term in
the Gillikinese cognate oos, which carries freights of meaning about
growth, development, power, generation. Even ooze, with its distant
companion noun virus, is thought to belong to the same general family.
The older I get, the more accurate this derivation seems to be."

"And yet the poet of the Oziad calls it 'Land of green abandon, land in
endless leaf.'"

"Poets are just as responsible for empire building as any other
professional hacks."

"Sometimes I would give anything to get away from here, but I dread the
thought of a trip across the deadly sands."

"That's only a legend," said Elphie. "Papa, you taught me that the sands
are no more deadly than these fields. That reminds me of the other
theory, that Oz is related to the word oasis. \Vhat the nomadic peoples
of the north thought of Gillikin, time beyond thinking, when Oz was first

discovered and settled. Now look, Papa, you needn't go so far. The
Vinkus is nearly another country. Why don't you come back with me?"

"I would love to, honey," he said. "But how could I leave Nessarose? I
never could."

"Even if she's Turtle Heart's daughter and not yours?" she said,
stingingly because stung.

"Especially if that," he answered.

And Elphaba saw that by not knowing for sure if Nesssarose had been
fathered by himself or by Turtle Heart, Frex had decided in some
subrational way that she was the daughter of them both. Nessarose was
the proof of their brief union-thefts, and, obviously, Melena's as well.
It didn't matter how crippled Nessarose was; she would always be more
than Elphaba, always. She would always mean more.


Elphaba and Nessarose sat in Nessa's bedchamber. A handmaid served some
soup made of cow's stomach. Elphie, not normally squeamish, couldn't eat
it. The maid neatly spooned tiny portions into Nessie's mouth.

"I'm not going to beat around the bush," Nessarose said. "I would like
you to join me here as a sister-at-arms, to lead my circle of advisors
and to manage in my absence if I should travel."

"I have no love of Munchkinland, from what I've seen so far," said
Elphaba. "The people are cruel and impressed by charades, the pomp of
this place is oppressive, and I do believe you're sitting on a powder keg."

"All the more reason you should stay and help me," said Nessarose.
"Weren't we raised up to expect a life of service?"

"Your shoes have made you strong," said Elphie. "I didn't know shoes
could do that. I don't think you need me. Don't lose those shoes,
though." She thought: Your shoes give you an unnatural balance. You look
like a serpent standing on its tail.

"Surely you remember them from before?"

"Yes, but I hear Glinda amplified them with a magic spell, or something."

"Oh, that Glinda! What a card." Nessie swallowed and smiled. "Well, you
can have the shoes, my dear-over my dead body. I'll rewrite my will and
leave them to you. Though what they would do for you, I can hardly
imagine. They didn't grow me new arms. Perhaps enchanted shoes

won't change the color of your skin but will make you enticing enough so
that it won't matter."

"I'm already too old to be that enticing."

"Why you're still in the prime of life, and so am I!" said Nessarose,
laughing. "Tell me you've got some romancing man in a Vinkus yurt or
tent or teepee or whatever it is they call home there. Come on."

"I have been wondering something, ever since I saw you do that spell
this morning," Elphie said. "The spell over the axe."

"Oh right. Small potatoes, that one."

"Do you by any chance remember that time in Shiz, when Madame Morrible
said she was putting us under a spell? And that we couldn't talk to each
other about it?"

"Go on. Sounds familiar. She was so creepy, wasn't she? A master of
tyranny."

"She said she had chosen us-me, you, and Glinda-to be Adepts. To be
agents of someone quite high up. To be sorceresses and, I don't know,
secret accomplices. She promised we'd be highly placed and effectual.
She made us think we couldn't ever discuss it with one another."

"Oh yes, that. I do remember. What a witch she was."

"Well, do you think there's any truth to that? Do you think she had the
power to bind us into silence? To make us powerful sorceresses?"

"She had the power to scare us out of our wits, but we were young and
very stupid, as I remember."

"I had the feeling at the time that she was in collusion with the
Wizard, and that she ordered her tiktok thing-Grommetik, the name's just
come back to me, isn't memory odd like that-to kill Doctor Dillamond."

"You saw fiends with knives behind every chair, you always did,"
Nessarose said. "I don't think that Madame Morrible had any real power.
She was a manipulative woman, but her power was very limited, and in our
naivete we saw her as a villain. She was merely full of self-importance."

"I wonder. I tried to say something about it afterward. Didn't we all
faint?"

"We were innocent and horribly suggestible, Elphie."

"And Glinda's gone on to marry money, as Madame Morrible said. Is Sir
Chuffrey still alive?"

"If you can call it that, yes. And Glinda is a sorceress, there's no
questioning that. But Madame Morrible was merely predicting things to
us; she saw our talents, as an educator could be expected to do, and she
advised us on how to make the most of them. What's so surprising about
that?"

"She tried to seduce us into a secret service for an unknown master. I'm
not inventing this, Nessie."

"She knew how to get toyou, obviously, by appealing to your sense of
conspiracy. I don't remember such alluring nonsense."

Elphaba fell silent. Perhaps Nessie was right. And yet here they were, a
dozen years later: two Witches, in a manner of speaking. And Glinda a
sorceress for the public good. It was enough to make Elphie go back to
Kiamo Ko and burn that Grimmerie, and burn the broom too, for that matter.

"She always reminded Glinda of a carp," said Nessarose. "Can you really
be scared of a fish, after all these years?"

"I saw in a book once a drawing of a lake monster, or a sea monster if
you believe in oceans," said Elphie. "I may not be sure if monsters
exist, but I'd rather live my life in doubt than be persuaded by a real
experience of one."

"You said much the same thing about the Unnamed God once," said
Nessarose quietly.

"Oh, now please don't start on that."

"A soul is too valuable to ignore, Elphie."

"Well, isn't it good I don't have one then, so there's no muss, no fuss."

"You have a soul. Everyone does."

"How about the Cow you bartered for today, and the Sheep?"

"I'm not talking about lower orders."

"That sort of talk offends me, Nessie. I freed those Animals today, you
know."

Nessarose shrugged. "You have some rights in Colwen Grounds. I'm not
going to walk around prohibiting your little pet missions."

"They said some pretty horrible things about how Animals are being
treated here. I thought it was the Emerald City and Gillikin only; I
somehow guessed Munchkinland, being more rural, would have more common
sense."

"You know," said Nessie, indicating that the maid should wipe her mouth
with a napkin, "once at a prayer service I met a soldier. He had lost a
limb in a campaign against some restless Quadlings. He said every
morning he slapped the stump where his arm used to be. He got the blood
ringing, and after a few minutes there was a tingling sensation, and he
developed a kind of phantom limb. Not all at once, and not in physical
form: What he regained was a sense of what it had felt like. It would
grow to the elbow, and then his memory, his bodily memory, of limbs in
three-dimensional space, would extend, eventually, all the way down to
his fingers. Once his phantom limb was in place, mentally, that is, he
could face the day as a crippled man. Furthermore, he had better
physical balance."

Elphaba, feeling more and more like a real Witch, looked at her sister,
waiting for the punch.

"I tried it for a while. For months in fact. I had Nanny massage my
little knobs there. After much hard work on poor Nanny's part, I began
to develop just the beginning of a sense of what it would be like to
have arms. It never went very far, until Glinda dazzled up these shoes.
Now- I don't know why, maybe they're too tight and my circulation is
complaining--after an hour on my feet, I have phantom arms. First time
in my life. I can't quite get the feel of fingers."

"Phantom limbs," said Elphie. "Well, I'm pleased for you."

"You know, if you slapped yourself around, spiritually speaking," said
Nessarose, "you might develop a phantom soul, or something that felt
like one. It's a good internal guide, a soul. I suspect you might even
recognize that it's not a phantom at all-it's a real one."

"That'll do, Nessie," said Elphaba. "I don't care to discuss my
spiritual trials with you."

"Why don't you stay here with me, join my staff, and we can have you
baptized," said Nessarose warmly.

"Water is profoundly painful to me, as you well know, and I won't
discuss it again. I can't pledge allegiance to anything Unnamed. It's a
sham."

"You're condemning yourself to a life of sadness," Nessarose said.

"sVell, that I'm already familiar with, so at least there's nothing to
jump out and surprise me." Elphie threw down her napkin. "I can't stay

here, Nessie. I can't help you out. I have responsibilities of my own
back in the Vinkus, which you have shown precious little interest in
finding out about. Oh, all right, I know, a revolution has occurred and
you're a new prime minister or something, you surely have a right to be
distracted if anyone does. Either accept the burden of leadership or
turn it down, but either way make sure it's your choice in the matter,
and not an accident of history, a martyrdom by default. I worry about
you, but I can't stay and be your dogsbody."

"I've just been clumsy and outspoken. Don't expect me to remember how to
be sisterly in such a short while-"

"You've had Shell to practice on all these years," Elphaba said sternly.

"Just like that, you're getting up and going?" Nessarose stood too, in
that sinuous, unsettling way she had. "After twelve years of separation,
we have three, four days of reunion and that's that?"

"Keep yourself well," Elphie said, and kissed her sister on both cheeks.
"I know you'll be a good Eminence for as long as you want to be."

"I shall pray for your soul," promised Nessarose.

"I shall wait for your shoes," Elphie answered.


On her way out, Elphie thought about going to say good-bye to her
father, and then decided against it. She had said to him everything that
she could bring herself to say. They had ganged up on her, in the
claustrophobic, lovIng way of families, and she wanted no more of it.


7
______
Taking the northern route over the Madeleines, she realized she would
pass Lake Chorge. She decided to pause there, about halfway home,
interested to note that she was actually glad to be heading back. She
paced the edge of the lake, looking for Caprice-in-the-Pines, but she
could not pick it out of the many resort villas that had sprung up since
that visit in her youth.

But it wasn't the visible terrain she was really seeing. It was the
world at large. The character it seemed to have, how it seemed to refer
to itself. How could Nessarose believe in the Unnamed God? Behind every

aspect of the world is another aspect of the world. In a sense, wasn't
that what Doctor Dillamond had been on about? He had imagined another
true foundation of the world, defensible by proofs and experiments; he
had figured out how to locate it. But she was not a visionary. Behind
the blue and white marbleized paper of the lake, beyond the watered silk
of the sky, Elphaba couldn't see any deeper in.

Not about the raw material of life: the muscle structure of angels'
wings, the capillary action involved in focusing a gimlet gaze. Nor
about the gooey subjects of the empyrean: not about good, if the Unnamed
God was good. Not about evil, either.

For who was in thrall to whom, really? And could it ever be known? Each
agent working in collusion and antagonism-like the cold and the sun
alike creating a deadly spear of ice . . . Was the Wizard a charlatan, a
fraud, a despot of merely human power and failure? Did he control the
Adepts-Nessarose and Glinda, and an unnamed third, for it surely wasn't
Elphie-or was it only put to him by Madame Morrible that he did, to
assuage his obvious ego, his appetite for the semblance of power?

And Madame Morrible? And Yackle? Was there any connection? Were they the
same person, were they harsh divinities, avatars of a power of darkness,
were they poisonous flitches struck from the evil body of the Kumbric
Witch? Or were they-singly, or together-old Kumbricia herself, or such
as could be presumed to have survived from the heroic age of mythology
into these crabbed, cramped, modern days? Did they govern the Wizard,
jerk him about like a marionette?

Who is in thrall to whom?

And while you wait to learn, the deadly icicle, formed by all opposing
forces, falls and drives its cold nail into penetrable flesh.

She left the pine-needled shores of Lake Chorge in a state of high
frustration and energy. Having no confidence to decide about matters of
political or theological hierarchy, she felt driven to dig up those old
notes she had collected from Doctor Dillamond's study the day after he
was murdered. Something concrete under her fingertips. A magnifying
lens, a surgical knife, a sterilized probe. Perhaps now she was old
enough to understand what he had been getting at. He had been a unionist
essentialist; she was a novice atheist. But she still might profit from
his work, after all this time.

The winds were with her as far as the lower slopes of the Great Kells.
Thereafter she had a harder time, both finding her way and keeping her
seat. A number of times she had to dismount and walk. Fortunately it
wasn't very cold, and she came upon small clusters of nomads in the
protected vales, who kept her heading in the right direction. Still, she
was two weeks returning, even with the help of a broom.

Late in the afternoon, with the sun still hot and high compared to its
winter habits, she toiled her way up the last slopes, Kiamo Ko raising
its narrow dark profile above her. She felt like a child looking up at
the top hat of a very tall gentleman. Eager to avoid ceremony and fuss,
she skirted the village. Without the broom this approach would be nearly
impossible; as it was, even the broom seemed to be feeling the effort.
She came to a halt in the orchard, made her way to the back door, and
found it open, which meant the sisters were out flower picking or some
such nonsense.

The place was quiet. She grabbed a browning apple from the sideboard and
trudged up the steps of her tower without running into anyone. When she
passed Nanny's room, she rattled the doorknob and said, "Nanny?"

"Oh," came a little shriek, "you startled me!"

"May I come in?"

"Just a minute." There was the sound of furniture being dragged away
from the door. "Well, this is a fine mess, Miss Elphaba! Going off and
leaving us to be murdered in our beds, or just as likely!"

"What are you talking about? Let me in."

"And not saying a word. You had us frantic with worry-" The last piece
scraped across the floor, and Nanny flung open the door. "You hideous
ungrateful woman!" She fell heavily into her arms and burst into tears.

"Please, I've had enough drama to last me the rest of my life," said
Elphaba. "What are you going on about?"

Nanny took some while to calm down. She rummaged through her bag for
some smelling salts, pulling out enough little bottles and satchels to
set up her own apothecary business. There were blue glass vials, clear
piliboxes, snakeskin envelopes of powders and pills, and a beautiful
green glass bottle that had an old torn label on it, MIRACLE ELI-.

She administered calming agents to herself, and when she could breathe
again, she said, "Well, you know-my dear-you saw I suppose, that
everyone has disappeared?"

Elphaba scowled in confusion. And rising, sudden fear.

Nanny took a deep breath. "Now don't be angry at Nanny. It's not Nanny's
fault. Those soldiers suddenly decided that their exercises were
finished. I don't know how, maybe Nor told them you were gone? She told
us; she'd been sneaking around looking for your broom, and she said you
weren't here. So maybe she mentioned it to them. You know how nice they
were to her, how they adored her. The soldiers came to the front door
and said that they needed to escort the entire family, Sarima and her
sisters and Nor and Irji, back to their base camp, wherever it is. They
didn't require me, they said, which was very insulting indeed, and I let
them know as much. Sarima asked why, and that nice Commander Cherrystone
said that it was for their own protection. In case a fighting battalion
comes through, he said, it won't do to have any members of the ruling
family still here, or there might be a bloody incident."

"Coming through, a battalion? When?" Elphie hit the windowsill with her
open palm.

"I'm trying to tell you. No time soon, he said; this is just advance
planning. They became insistent. Those soldiers scattered the peasants
in the village-I don't think there was any killing, it all seemed quite
humane, except for the chains-and only I was left behind, being too old
to march down a mountain, and no relation besides. Also, they left Liir,
since he was no threat and I think they'd become fond of him. But a few
days later Lift disappeared, too. I'm sure he was desperately lonely for
them, and he must have followed them to their camp."

'And nobody protested?" shrieked Elphie.

"Don't yell at me. Of course they protested. Well, Sarima fell in a
heap, fainting dead away, and liji and Nor looked after her. But the
sisters, that mealy-mouthed lot, they barricaded the dining room and set
fire to the chapel wing, trying to draw attention, and Three slammed a
sharpening stone on the hand of Commander Cherrystone and broke every
bone in his wrist, I bet. Five and Six rang the bell, but the shepherds
are too far away, and it all happened too fast. Two wrote messages and
tried to tie them to the feet of your crows, but they wouldn't be
liberated, they just kept roosting on the wIndowsills again, useless old
things. Four had a great idea about boiling oil, but they couldn't get
the flame high enough.

Oh, it was a merry chase here for a day or two, but of course the
soldiers won. Men always win."

Nanny continued petulantly, "And we all thought they'd ambushed you
earlier, to get you out of the way. You're the only effective one here,
everyone knows that. They all think you're a Witch. The townspeople told
me that if you come back you're to be in touch with the hamlet of Red
Windmill down below the dam, you know the one. They seem to think you
can rescue their royal family, such as they are. I told them it was
misplaced trust, that you wouldn't be interested, but I promised to give
you the message, so there it is."

Elphaba strode back and forth. She pulled her hair from its customary
knot and shook it out, as if trying to shake away what she was hearing.
"And Chistery?" she said at last.

"Cowering behind the piano in the music room, no doubt."

"Well, this is a fine kettle of fish."

She strode, she sat, she stroked her chin, she kicked Nanny's chamber
pot and broke it. "What have I got," she mumbled. "There's the broom.
There's the bees. There's the monkey. There's Killyjoy-did they hurt
Killyjoy? There's Killyjoy. There's the crows. There's Nanny. There's
the villagers, if they're unharmed. There's the questionable Grimmerie.
It's not a lot."

"No, it's not," said Nanny, sighing. "Doom, doom, I say."

"We can get them back," said Elphie. "We will."

"Count Nanny in," said Nanny, "though I never did like those sisters,
I'll tell you."

Elphie clenched her fists and tried to keep from striking herself. "Liir
gone too," she said. "I came here to make my apologies to Sarima, and I
lost Liir in the bargain. Am I good for nothing in this life?"

Kiamo Ko was deathly still, except for old Nanny's labored breathing as
she took a catnap in her rocking chair. Killyjoy thumped his tail on the
floor, happy to see his mistress. The sky was broad and hopeless beyond
the windows. Elphaba was tired herself, but she couldn't sleep. For,
from time to time, she imagined she could hear the sound of water
lapping against the sides of the fishwell, as if the legendary
underground lake were rising to drown them all.


Book 5 - The Murder and Its Afterlife


1
______
Afterward, there was a lot of discussion about what people had thought
it was. The noise had seemed to come from all corners of

the sky at once.

Journalists, armed with the thesaurus and apocalyptic scriptures,
fumbled and were defeated by it. "A gulfy deliquescence of deranged and
harnessed air" A volcano of the invisible, darkly construed" -

To the pleasure faithers with tiktok affections, it was the sound of
clockworks uncoiling their springs and running down at a terrible speed.
It was the release of vengeful energy.

To the essentialists, it seemed as if the world had suddenly found
itself too crammed with life, with cells splitting by the billions,
molecules uncoupling to annihilation, atoms shuddering and juggernauting
in their casings.

To the superstitious it was the collapsing of time. It was the oozing of
the ills of the world into one crepuscular muscle, intent on stabbing
the world to its core for once and for all.

To the more traditionally religious it was the blitzkrieg of vengeful
angel armies, the awful name of the Unnamed God sounding itself at
last-surprise-and the evaporation of all hopes for mercy.

One or two pretended to think it was squadrons of flying dragons
overhead, trained for attack, breaking the sky from its moorings by the
thrash of tripartite wings.

In the wake of the destruction it caused, no one had the hubris or
courage (or the prior experience) to lie and claim to have known the act
oi terror for what it was: a wind twisted up in a vortical braid.

In short: a tornado.


The lives of many Munchkinlanders were lost-along with square miles of
topsoil from hundred of years of cultivation. The shifting margins of
sand in the eastern desert covered several villages without a trace, and
no survivors were left to tell the tale of their suffering. Whirling
like something from a nightmare, the wind funnel drove into Oz thirty
miles north of Stonespar End, and delicately maneuvered around Colwen
Grounds, leaving every rose petal attached and every thorn in place. The
tornado

sliced through the Corn Basket, devastating the basis of the economy of
the renegade nation, and petered out, as if by design, not only at the
eastern terminus of the largely defunct Yellow Brick Road, but also at
the precise spot-the hamlet of Center Munch-where, outside a local
chapel, Nessarose was awarding prizes for perfect attendance at
religious education classes. The storm dropped a house on her head.

All the children survived to pray for Nessarose's soul at the memorial
service. Perfect attendance was never more perfect.

There were a great many jokes about the disaster, naturally. "You can't
hide from destiny," some said, "that house had her name on it." "That
Nessarose, she was giving such a good speech about religious lessons,
she really brought down the house!" "Everybody needs to grow up and
leave home sometimes, but sometimes HOME DOESN'T L1KE FE." "What's the
difference between a shooting star and a falling house?" "One which is
propitious grants delicious wishes, the other which is vicious squishes
witches." "What's big, thick, makes the earth move, and wants to have
its way with you?" "I don't know, but can you introduce me?"

Such a maelstrom had not been known in Oz before. Various terrorist
groups claimed credit, especially when news got around that the Wicked
Witch of the East-also known as the Eminent Thropp, depending on your
political stripe-had been snuffed out. It was not widely understood at
first that the house carried passengers. The mere presence of a house of
exotic design, set down almost intact upon the platform rigged up for
the visiting dignitaries, was stretching credulity enough. That
creatures might have survived such a fall was either patently
unbelievable or a clear indication of the hand of the Unnamed God in the
affair. Predictably, there were a few blind people who suddenly cried "I
can see!" a lame Pig that stood and danced a jig, only to be led
away-that sort of thing. The alien girl-she called herself Dorothy-was
by virtue of her survival elevated to living sainthood. The dog was
merely annoying.


2
______
When the news of Nessarose's premature death arrived at Kiamo Ko by
carrier pigeon, the Witch was deep in an operation of sorts, stitching
the wings of a white-crested male roc into the back mus

des of one of her current crop of snow monkeys. She had more or less
perfected the procedure, after years of botched and hideous failures,
when mercy killing seemed the only fair thing to do to the suffering
subject. Fiyero's old schoolbooks in the life sciences, from Doctor
Nikidik's course, had given some leads. Also the Grimmerie had helped,
if she was reading it correctly: She had found spells to convince the
axial nerves to think skyward instead of treeward. And once she got it
right, the winged monkeys seemed happy enough with their lot. She had
yet to see a female monkey in her population produce a winged baby, but
she still had hopes.

Certainly they had taken better to flying than they had to language.
Chistery, now a patriarch in the castle menagerie, had plateaued at
words of one syllable, and still seemed to have no clear idea of what he
was saying.

It was Chistery, in fact, who brought the pigeon's letter in to
Elphaba's operating salon. The Witch had him hold the fascia-slasher
while she unfolded the page. Shell's brief message told of the tornado
and informed her of the memorial service, which was scheduled for
several weeks later in the hope that she would receive this message in
time to come.

She put the message down and went back to work, placing grief and regret
away from her. It was a tricky business, wing attachment, and the
sedative she had administered to this monkey wouldn't last all morning.

"Chistery, it's time to help Nanny down the stairs, and find Liir if you
can, and tell him I need to talk to him at lunch," she said, through her
gritted teeth, glancing again at her own diagrams to make sure she had
the overlapping of muscle groups in the correct arrangement, front to back.


It was an achievement if Nanny could now make it to the dining room once
a day. "That's my job, that and sleeping, and Nanny does both very
well," she said every single noontime when she arrived, hungry from her
exertions on the stairs. Liir put out the cheese and bread and the
occasIonal cold joint, at which the three of them hacked and nibbled,
usually in an unsocial mood, before darting off to their afternoon chores.

Liir was fourteen, and insisted he was going to accompany the Witch to
Colwen Grounds. "I have never been anywhere, except that time with the
soldiers," he complained. "You never let me do anything."

"Someone has to stay and take care of Nanny," said the Witch. "Now there
isn't any point in arguing about it."

"Chistery can do it."

"Chistery can't. He's getting forgetful, and between him and Nanny
they'd burn the place to the ground. No, there's no more discussion
about it, Liir; you're not going. Besides, I'm going to have to travel
on my broom, I think, to get there in time."

"You never let me do anything."

"You can do the washing up."

"You know what I mean."

"What's he arguing about now, sweet thing?" asked Nanny loudly.

"Nothing," said the Witch.

"What's that you say?"

"Nothing."

"Aren't you going to tell her?" said Liir. "She helped raise Nessarose,
didn't she?"

"She's too old, she doesn't need to know. She's eighty-five, it'll only
upset her."

"Nanny," said lAir, "Nessie's dead."

"Hush, you useless boy, before I remove your testicles with my foot."

"Nessie did what?" screeched Nanny, looking rheumily out at them.

"Did died dead," intoned Chistery.

"Did what?"

"Nessie DIED," said Liir.

Nanny began to weep at the idea before she had even confirmed it. "Can
this be true, Elphie? Is your sister dead?"

"Liir, you'll answer for this," said the Witch. "Yes, Nanny, I cannot
lie to you. There was a storm and a building collapsed. She went very
peacefully, they say."

"She went straight to the bosom of Lurlina," said Nanny, sobbing.
"Lurlina's golden chariot came to take her home." She patted the piece
of cheese on her plate, inexplicably. Then she buttered a napkin and
took a bite. "When do we leave for the funeral?"

"You're too old to travel, dear. I'm going in a few days. Liir will stay
and look after you."

"I wIll not," said Liir.

"He's a good boy," said Nanny, "but not as good as Nessarose. Oh,
sorrowful day! Liir, I'll take my tea in my room, I can't sit and talk
to you

335

as if nothing's happened." She hauled herself to her feet, leaning on
Chistery's head. (Chistery was devoted to her.) "You know, darling," she
said to the Witch, "I don't think the boy is old enough to see to my
needs. What if the castle is attacked again? Remember what happened the
last time you went away." She made a small, accusatory moue.

"Nanny, the Arjiki militia guard this place day and night. The Wizard's
army is well housed in the town of Red Windmill down below. They have no
intention of leaving that safe haven and risking decimation in these
mountain passes-not after what they did. That was their skirmish, that
was their campaign. Now they're just watchdogs. They staff the outpost
to report signs of an invasion or trouble from the mountain clans. You
know that. You have nothing to fear."

"I'm too old to be taken in chains like poor Sarima and her family,"
Nanny said. "And how could you rescue me, if you couldn't get them back?"

"I'm still working on that," said the Witch into Nanny's left ear.

"Seven years. You're very stubborn. It's my opinion they're all
moldering in a common grave, these seven long years. Liir, you have to
thank Lurlina that you weren't among them."

"I tried to rescue them," said Liir stubbornly, who had rewritten the
escapade in his own mind to give himself a more heroic role. It was not
longing for the companionship of soldiers, he told himself, no, it was a
courageous effort to save the family! In fact, Commander Cherrystone out
of kindness had had Liir tied up and left him in a sack in someone's
barn, to prevent their having to incarcerate him with the others. The
Commander had not realized Liir was a bastard son of Fiyero, for Liir
himself didn't know it.

"Yes well, that's a good boy." Nanny was now distracted from the sad
news, drifting back to the tragedy she remembered more viscerally. "Of
course I did everything I could, but Nanny was an old woman even then.
Elphie, do you think they're dead?"

"I could find out nothing," said the Witch for the ten thousandth time.
"If they were spirited to the Emerald City or if they were murdered, I
could not tell. You know this, Nanny. I bribed people. I spied around. I
hired agents to follow every lead. I wrote to the Princess Nastoya of
the Scrow for advice. I spent a year following every useless clue. You
know this. Don't torture me with the memory of my failure."

"It was my failure, I'm sure," said Nanny peacefully; they all knew

she didn't think so for a minute. "I should have been younger and more
vigorous. I'd have given that Commander Cherrystone a piece of my mind!
And now Sarima is gone, gone, and her sisters too. I suppose it's none
of our fault, really," she concluded disingenuously, scowling at the
Witch. "You had someplace to go, so you went; who can criticize you for
that?"

But the Image of Sarima in chains, Sarima as a decaying corpse, still
withholding from the Witch her forgiveness for Fiyero's death-it pained
her like water. "Give up, you old harridan," said the Witch, "must my
own whip me so? Go have your tea, you fiend."

The Witch sat down at last and thought of Nessarose, and what might
come. The Witch had tried to stay removed from the affairs of the
political world, but she knew a change of leadership in Munchkinland
could throw things out of balance-maybe to a positive effect. She felt a
guilty lightness at the death of her sister.

She made a list of things to bring with her to the memorial service.
Foremost was a page of the Grimmerie. In her chamber she pored over the
huge musty tome, and finally she ripped out an especially cryptic page.
Its letters still continued to contort beneath her eyes, sometimes
scrambling and unscrambling as she looked, as if they were formed by a
colony of ants. Whenever she gazed at the book, meaning might emerge on
a page that a day earlier had been illegible chicken scratches; and
meaning sometimes disappeared as she stared. She would ask her father,
who with his holy eyes would see the truth better.


3
______
Colwen Grounds was draped in black swags and purple bunting. When the
Witch arrived, she was greeted by a one-man less-than-welcoming
committee, a bearded Munchkinlander named Nipp, who seemed to be
concierge, janitor, and acting Prime Minister. "Your lineage no longer
allows you any particular liberties in Munchkinland," she was told.
"With the death of Nessarose, the honorific of Eminence is at last
abolished." The Witch didn't much care, but she wasn't inclined to
accept a unilateral dictum without a retort. She answered, "It is
abolished when I accept that it is abolished." Not that the honorific
had been used much in recent years; according to the occasional rambling
letter from Frex,

Nessarose had begun to be amused by the slur of "Wicked Witch of the
East," and had considered it a public penance worthy of a person with
such high moral standing. She even took to referring to herself as such.

Nipp showed her to her room. "I don't need much," said the Wicked Witch
of the West (as, in contrast, she allowed herself to be called, at least
by these Munchkinlander upstarts). "A bed for a couple of days, and I'd
like to see my father and attend the service. I'll collect a few things,
and be off soon. Now, do you know if our brother, Shell, will be here?"

"Shell has disappeared again," said Nipp. "He left his regards. There is
a mission he is undertaking in the Glikkus, it can't wait. Some of us
think he is defecting, worried about a change in government here now
that the tyrant is dead. As well he might," he added coldly. "Have you
fresh towels?"

"I don't use them," said the Witch, "it's all right. Go away now." She
was very tired, and sad.


At sixty-three, Frex was even balder, and his beard whiter, than he had
been last time. His shoulders hunched in, as if trying to meet each
other, his head sank into a natural cavity made by a deteriorating spine
and neck. He sat covered by a blanket on the verandah. "And who is
this," he said when the Witch came up and sat next to him. She realized
his sight had nearly gone for good.

"It's your other daughter, Papa," she said, "the one that's left."

"Fabala," he said, "what will I do without my pretty Nessarose? How will
I live without my pet?"

She held his hand until he fell asleep, and wiped his face though his
tears burned her skin.


The liberated Munchkinlanders were destroying the house. The Witch had
no use for frippery, but it seemed a shame to waste a property this way.
Desecration was so shortsighted; didn't they know that, however they now
decided to live, Colwen Grounds could be their parliament building?

She spent time with her father, but they didn't speak much. One morning,
when he was more alert and energetic than usual, he asked her if she
really was a witch. "Oh well, what's a witch? Who has ever trusted
language in this family?" she replied. "Father, will you look at something

for me? Will you tell me what you see?" She withdrew from an inner
pocket the page from the Grimmerie and she unfolded it like a large
napkin on his lap. He ran his hands over it, as if he could pick up
meaning through his fingertips, and then held it near, peering and
squinting.

"What do you see?" she asked. "Can you tell me the nature of this
writing? Is it for good or for ill?"

"The markings are crisp enough, and large. I ought to be able to make it
out." He turned it upside down. "But little Fabala, I can't read this
alphabet. It is in a foreign tongue. Can you?"

"Well, sometimes I seem to be able to, but the talent is fleeting," said
the Witch. "I don't know If it's my eyes or if it's the manuscript
that's being tricky."

"You always had strong eyes," said her father. "Even as a toddler you
could see things no one else could."

"Hah," she said, "I don't know what you mean."

"You had a looking glass that sweet Turtle Heart made for you, and you
looked in it as if you could see other worlds, other times."

"I was probably looking at myself."

But they both knew that wasn't true, and Frex, for once, said so. "You
didn't look at yourself," he said, "you hated to. You hated your skin,
your sharp features, your strange eyes."

"Where did I learn that hate?" she asked.

"You were born knowing it," he said. "It was a curse. You were born to
curse my life." He patted her hand affectionately, as if he didn't mean
much by this. "When you lost your weird baby teeth, and your second
teeth came in normally, we all relaxed a little. But for the first
couple of years-until Nessarose was born-you were a little beast. Only
when saintly Nessarose was delivered to us, even more scarred than you,
did you settle down like a normal child."

"Why was I cursed to be different?" she said. "You are a holy man, you
must know."

"You are my fault," he said. Despite his words he was somehow pinning
blame on her instead of himself, though she still wasn't clever enough
to see how this was done. "For what I had failed to do, you were born to
plague me. But don't worry yourself about it now," he added, "that's all
long ago."

"And Nessarose?" she asked. "How do the weights and balances of shame
and guilt account for her?"

"She is a portrait of the lax morals of your mother," Frex said calmly.

"And that's why you could love her so much," said the Witch. "Because
her human frailty wasn't your fault."

"Don't stew so, you always stewed," Frex said. "And now she is dead, so
what does it matter?"

"My life is still running on."

"But mine is running out," he answered, sadly. So she put his hand back
on his lap, and kissed him gently, and folded up the page of the
Grimmerie and tucked it in her pocket. Then she turned to greet the
person approaching them across the lawn. She thought it was someone with
tea (Frex was still accorded a measure of service, due to his age and
his mildness, and, she supposed, his vocation), but she stood and
pressed down the front of her homespun black skirt when she saw who it was.

"Miss Glinda of the Arduennas," she said, her heart churring.

"Oh, you came, I knew you would," said Glinda. "Miss Elphaba, the last
true Eminent Thropp, no matter what they say!"

Glinda approached slowly, either through age or shyness, or because her
ridiculous gown weighed so much that it was hard for her to get up
enough steam to stride. She looked like a huge Glindaberry bush, was all
the Witch could think; under that skirt there must be a bustle the size
of the dome of Saint Florix. There were sequins and furbelows and a sort
of History of Oz, it seemed, stitched in trapunto in six or seven ovoid
panels all around the skirting. But her face: beneath the powdered skin,
the wrinkles at eyelid and mouth, was the face of the timid schoolgirl
from the Pertha Hills.

"You haven't changed a whit," said Glinda. "Is this your father?"

The Witch nodded but shushed her; Frex had dropped off again. "Come,
we'll walk in the gardens before they root up the roses out of some
beknighted attempt at eradicating injustice." The Witch took Glinda's
arm. "Glinda, you look hideous in that getup. I thought you'd have
developed some sense by now."

"When in the provinces," she said, "you have to show them a little
style. I don't think it's so bad. Or are the satin bells at the shoulder
a bit too too?"

"Excessive," agreed the Witch. "Someone get the scissors; this is a
disaster."

They laughed. "My dear, what they've done to this grand old place," said
Glinda. "Look, those pediments are meant to support graven urns, and
those revolutionary slogans are painted all over that exquisite
belvedere. I hope you'll have something done, Elphie. There isn't a
belvedere to match that outside of the capital."

"I never had the love of architecture that you did, Glinda," said the
Witch. "I just read the slogans: SHE WALKED ALL OVER us. Why shouldn't
they paint all over her belvedere? If she did in fact walk all over them?"

"Tyrants come and go, belvederes are forever," said Glinda. "I can
recommend topnotch restorers the moment you ask."

"I hear you were one of the first on the scene," said the Witch, "when
Nessarose died. How did that come to be?"

"Sir Chuifrey-my hubby-he has some investments in pork futures, you
know, and Munchkinland is trying to diversify its economic base so as
not to be at the mercy of Gillikin banks and the Emerald City Corn
Exchange. You never know what relationship might develop between
Munchkinland and the rest of Oz, and it's best to be prepared. So where
Sir Chuifrey does business, I do good. It's a partnership made in
heaven. You know I have more money than I can give away?" She giggled
and squeezed the Witch's arm. "I never imagined that doing public
charity would provide such a rush."

"So you were here in Munchkinland-?"

"Yes, I had been at an orphanage on the shores of Mossmere, and for a
lark I thought I'd go to the game park-they have dragons there now, and
I'd never seen a dragon-so I was scarcely a dozen miles away when the
storm hit. We had terrible winds even there; I cannot imagine how a
ceremony could have been in progress in Center Munch. In Mossmere there
were whole sections of the park closed to visitors due to the fear of
falling trees and escaping Animals-"

"Oh, so they call it a game park, with Animals?" said the Witch.

"You must go, dear, it's a lark. Well, as I was saying, the house came
right out of the blue, and I suppose I mean that literally-if they'd
sensed a big storm, they'd surely have canceled the event and run for
cover. Anyway, the news system is very advanced now in parts of

Munchkinland; Nessarose herself oversaw a system of beacons and tiktok
code signals, to warn of invasions from the Wizard and points west. So
it was only a matter of minutes before the news was being flashed in all
directions. I commandeered a Mature Pfenix and asked her to bring me to
Center Munch, and I arrived before most of the locals had quite figured
out what had hit them."

"Tell me about it," said the Witch.

"You'll be pleased to hear there was no blood. I venture to guess there
were massive internal injuries, but there was no blood. Of course
Nessarose's last few devoted followers thought this meant her spirit was
taken up intact, and that she suffered little. I don't imagine she
suffered much, not with that kind of clonk on the noggin. Her more
unhappy subjects, who were the greater in number, thought it a droll act
of Lurlina, releasing them from Nessarose's particular sort of
fundamentalist bondage. There was revelry when I arrived, and much
feting of the funny girl and the dog who seem to have lived in the house."

"Oh, who's that?" said the Witch, who hadn't heard this part.

"Well, you know how Munchkinlanders bow and scrape no matter what their
democratic inclinations. No sooner had I arrived than they deferred to
me, introducing me as a witch. I tried to correct them, a sorceress is
really much more apt, but never mind. It was no doubt the outfit, it
cowed them. I was in a salmon-pink fantasy that day, and really it
suited me."

"Go on," said the Witch, who had never liked talking about clothes.

"Well, the child introduced herself: Dorothy from Kansas. I didn't know
the place, and said as much. She appeared as much surprised as anyone
else about what had happened, and she had a nasty little pooch yapping
about her heels. Tata or Toto or something. Toto. So this Dorothy was in
some state of shock, I can tell you. A fairly homely little girl with
little fashion sense, but I suppose that comes later in life for some
than others." She glanced sideways at the Witch. "Much later, in some
cases." And they both chuckled at that.

"Dorothy supposed she should try to get back to her home, but as she
couldn't remember having studied anything about Oz in school, nor could
I recall a place named Kansas, we decided that she should look for help
elsewhere. The fickle MunchkInlanders seemed ready to nominate her as
Nessie's successor, which would have angered Nipp and all those

ministers in Coiwen Grounds who've spent their careers jockeying for
position when and if Nessarose ever saw fit to die. Besides, there may
be other developments afoot. Dorothy might have gotten in the way."

"An eye to public affairs, well, somehow I'm not surprised," said the
Witch, in fact quite pleased. "I always knew you were in there
somewhere, Glinda."

"Well, I thought the better move would be to get Dorothy out of
Munchkinland before a civil war tore this place up even worse than it
already is. There are factions, you know, who support the re-annexation
of Munchkinland by 0z. It would do the girl no good to get caught in the
crossfire of opposing interests."

"Oh, so she's not here," said the Witch. "I had thought I'd meet her."

"Dorothy? Now you're not going to take against her, are you?" said
Glinda. "She's a child, really. Big by Munchkinlander standards, of
course, but a squat little thing nonetheless. She's an innocent, Elphie;
I can see by the gleam in your eye that you're up to your old paranoia
thing again. She wasn't piloting that house, you know, she was trapped
in it. This would be one struggle you'd do well just to leave alone."

The Witch sighed. "You may be right. You know, I'm getting used to stiff
muscles in the morning. Sometimes I think that vengeance is habit
forming too. A stiffness of the attitude. I keep hoping that the Wizard
will be toppled in my lifetime, and this aim seems to be at odds with
happiness. I suppose I can't take on avenging the death of a sister I
didn't get on all that well with anyway."

"Especially if the death is an accident," Glinda said.

"Glinda," said the Witch, "I know you must remember Fiyero, and you have
heard of his death. Fifteen years ago."

"Of course," said she. "Well, I heard he died, under mysterious
circumstances."

"I knew his wife," said the Witch, "and his in-laws. It was suggested to
me once that he had been carrying on an affair with you in the Emerald
City."

Glinda turned yellow-pink. "My dear," she said, "I was fond of Fiyero
and he was a good man and a fine statesman. But among other things, you
will remember he was dark-skinned. Even if I took up dal

liances-an inclination I believe rarely benefits anyone-you are °nce
again being suspicious and cranky to suspect me and Fiyero! The idea!"

And the Witch realized, sinkingly, that this was of course true; the
ugly skill at snobbery had returned to Glinda in her middle years.

But for her part, Glinda had no real iniding that the Witch was
implicating herself as FIyero's adulterous lover. Glinda was too fussed
to listen that closely. The Witch in fact alarmed her a little. It was
not just the novelty of seeing her again, but the strange charisma
Elphaba possessed, which had always put Glinda in the shade. Also there
was the thrill, basis indeterminable, which made Glinda shy, and caused
her to rush her words, and to speak in a false high voice like an
adolescent. How quickly you could be thrown back to the terrible
uncertainty of your youth!

For when she chose to remember her youth at all, she could scarcely
dredge up an ounce of recollection about that daring meeting with the
Wizard. She could recall far more clearly how she and Elphie had shared
a bed on the road to the Emerald City. How brave that had made her feel,
and how vulnerable too.

They walked for a way In a restless silence.

"Things might begin to improve now," said the Witch after a time. "I
mean Munchkinland will be a mess for a while. A tyrant is terrible, but
at least he or she imposes order. The anarchy that follows the
deposition of a tyrant can be bloodier than before. Still, things may
work out all right. Father always said that when left to themselves, the
Munchklnlanders had a great deal of common sense. And Nessie was, for
all practical purposes, a foreigner. She was raised in Quadling Country,
and you know, she may have been half Quadling herself, I've come to
realize. She was a foreign queen on this soil, despite her inherited
title. With her gone, the Munchkinlanders might just right themselves."

"Bless her soul," said Glinda. "Or do you still not believe in the soul?"

"I can make no comment on the souls of others," said the Witch.

They walked some more. Here and there the Witch saw, as before, the
totemic straw men, pinned to tunics, and erected like effigies in the
corners of fields. "I find them somewhat creepy," she said to Glinda.
"Now one other thing I want to ask you; I asked this of Nessa once. Do
you remember Madame Momble's corralling us into her parlor, and

proposing we become three Adepts, three high witches of Oz? Sort of
secret local priestesses, shaping public policy behind the scenes,
conujbuting to the stability-or instability-of Oz as required by some
unnamed higher authority?"

"Oh, that farce, that melodrama, how could I forget it?" said Glinda. "I
wonder if we were put under a spell then? Do you remember, she


paid we couldn't talk about it, and it didn't seem that we could?"

"Well we are talking about it, so if there was any truth to it, which I
doubt, it's certainly worn off by now."

"But look what's happened to us. Nessarose was the Wicked

Witch of the East-you know that's what they called her, don't pretend to
be so shocked-and I have a stronghold in the West, and I seem to have
rallied the Arjikis around me, by dint of the absence of their ruling
family-and there you are, sitting pretty in the North with your bank
accounts and your legendary skills at sorcery."

Legendary nothing I simply see to it that I am admired in the right
circles," said Glinda. "Now, my memory is just as good as yours. And

Madame Morrible proposed that I be an Adept of Gillikin, but that you be
an Adept of Munchkinland, and Nessa be an Adept of Quadling

Country. The Vinkus she didn't think worth bothering about. If she was
seeing the future, she got it wrong. She got you and Nessa all wrong."

"Forget the details," said the Witch tartly. "I just mean, Glinda, is it
possible we could be living our entire adult lives under someone's
spell? How could we tell if we were the pawns of someone's darker game?
I know, I know, I can see it in your face: Elphie,you're sniffing
conspiracy theories again. Butyou were there. You heard what I heard.
How do you know your life hasn't been pulled by the strings of some
malign magic?"

"Well, I pray a lot," said Glinda, "not terribly genuinely, I admit, but
I try. I think the Unnamed God would have mercy on me and give me the
benefit qf the doubt, and release me from a spell if I had accidentally
fallen under one. Don't you? Or are you still so atheistic?"

"I have always felt like a pawn," said the Witch. "My skin color's been
a curse, my missionary parents made me sober and intense, my school days
brought me up against political crimes against Animals, my love life
imploded and my lover died, and if I had any life's work of my own, I
haven't found it yet, except in animal husbandry, if you could call it
that."

"I'm no pawn," said Glinda. "I take all the credit in the world for my
own foolishness. Good gracious, dear, all of life is a spell. You know
that. But you do have some choice."

"Well, I wonder," said the Witch.

They walked on. Graffiti was splattered on the sides of the granite
plinths of statues. NOW THE SHOE'S ON THE OTHER FOOT. Glinda tchtched.
"Animal husbandry?" she said.

They crossed a little bridge. Bluebirds twinkled music above them like a
sentimental entertainment.

"I sent this Dorothy, this girl, on to the Emerald City," said Glinda.
"I told her I'd never seen the Wizard-well, I had to lie, don't look at
me like that; if I told her the truth about him she would never have
left here. I told her to ask him to send her home. With his
reconnaissance spies all over Oz, and no doubt elsewhere, he has heard
of Kansas, I'm sure. Nobody else has."

"That was a cruel thing to do," said the Witch.

"She's such a harmless child, no one should take her seriously," said
Glinda carelessly. "If the Munchkinlanders started rallying around her,
reunification might be a more bloody affair than we all hope."

"So you hope for reunification?" muttered the Witch, disgusted.

"You support it?" -

"Besides," Glinda went on blithely, "having some motherly instinct
somewhere inside this pushed-up bosom of mine, I gave her Nessa's shoes
as a sort of protection."

"You what?" The Witch whirled and faced Glinda. For a moment she was
dumb with rage, but only for a moment. "Not only does she come whomping
out of the sky and stepping her big clumsy house all over my sister, but
she gets the shoes too? Glinda, those shoes weren't yours to give away!
My father made them for her! And furthermore, Nessa promised I could
have them when she died!"

"Oh yes," said Glinda in a false calm, surveying the Witch up and down,
"and they would make the perfect accessory for that glass-of-fashion
outfit you have on. Come on, Elphie, since when have you cared about
shoes, of all things? Look at those army boots you have on!"

"Whether I'd wear them or not is none of your concern. You can't go
handing out a person's effects like that, what right had you? Papa

reshaped those shoes from skills he learned from Turtle Heart. You've
stuck your fancy wand in where it wasn't wanted!"

"I'll remind you," said Glinda, "that those shoes were coming apart
until I had them resoled, and I laced them through with a special
binding spell of my own. Neither your father nor you did that much for
her. Elphie, I stood by her when you abandoned her in Shiz. As you
abandoned me. You did, don't deny it, stop those lightning bolt looks at
me, I won't have it. I became her surrogate sister. And as an old friend
I gave her the power to stand upright by herself through those shoes,
and if I made a mistake I'm sorry, Elphie, but I still feel they were
more mine to give away than yours."

"Well, I want them back," said the Witch.

"Oh, put it behind you, will you, they're only shoes," said Glinda,
"you're behaving as if they're holy relics. They were shoes, and a bit
out of style, truth be told. Let the girl have them. She has nothing else."

"Look how the people here thought of them," said the Witch; she pointed
to a stable on which was scrawled, in broad red letters, WALK ALL

OVER YOU YOU OLD WITCH.


"Please, give it a rest," said Glinda, "I have such a headache coming on."

"Where is she?" said the Witch. "If you won't retrieve them, I'll get
them myself."

"If I'd known you wanted them," said Glinda, trying to make things all
right, "I'd have saved them for you. But you have to see, Elphie, the
shoes couldn't stay here. The ignorant pagan Munchkinlanders-Lurlinists
all, once you scratch the skin-they had put too much credit in those
silly shoes. I mean, a magic sword I could understand, but shoes?
Please. I had to get them out of Munchkinland."

"You are working in collusion with the Wizard to render Munchkinland
ready for annexation," said the Witch. "You have no agenda of charity,
Glinda. At least don't fool yourself. Or are you really under some rusty
spell of Madame Morrlble, after all this time?"

"I won't have you snapping at me," said Glinda. "The girl has left,
she's been on the road for a week now, she headed west. I tell you,
she's only a timid child, and means no harm. She'd be distressed to know
she'd taken something you wanted. There is no power in them for you,
Elphie."

The Witch said, "Glinda, if those shoes fall into the hands of the
Wizard, he'll use them somehow in a maneuver to reannex Munchkinland By
now they have too much significance to Munchkinlanders. The Wizard
mustn't have those shoes!"

Glinda reached out and touched the Witch's elbow. "They won't make your
father love you any better," she said.

The Witch pulled back. They stood glaring at each other. They had too
much common history to come apart over a pair of shoes, yet the shoes
were planted between them, a grotesque icon of their differences.
Neither one could retreat, or move forward. It was silly, and they were
stuck, and someone needed to break the spell. But all the Witch could do
was insist, "I want those shoes."


4
______
At the memorial service, Glinda and Sir Chuifrey perched in the balcony
reserved for dignitaries and ambassadors. The Wizard sent a
representative, resplendent in his dress reds with the emerald cross
marking quadrants on his chest, a crew of bodyguards at attention all
around him. The Witch sat below, and did not meet Glinda's eyes. Frex
wept until he brought on an attack of asthma, and the Witch helped him
out a side door, where he could catch his breath.

After the service, the Wizard's emissary approached the Witch. He said,
"You have been invited to an audience with the Wizard. He is traveling
by special diplomatic immunity, via a Pfenix, to offer his condolences
to the family this evening. You will be prepared to meet him at Colwen
Grounds this evening."

"He can't come here!" said the Witch. "He wouldn't dare!"

"Those who now make the decisions think otherwise," said the emissary.
"Be that as it may, he comes under cover of darkness, and only to speak
to you and your family."

"My father is not up to receiving the Wizard," said the Witch. "I won't
have it."

"He will see you, then," said the emissary. "He insists. He has
questions of a diplomatic nature to put to you. But you are not to make
this visit public, or it could go very hard on your father and your brother.

And on you," he added, as if that were not already evident.

She considered how she might use this command audience to her own
advantage: Sarima, the safety of Frex, the fate of Fiyero. "I agree,"
she concluded. "I will meet him." And, despite herself, she was glad for
a Moment that Nessarose's magicked shoes were safely out of the vicinity.


As the vesper bells rang, the Witch was summoned from her room by a
Munchkinlander maid. "You will have to submit to a search," said the
Wizard's emissary, meeting her in an antechamber. "You must understand
the protocol here."

She concentrated on her fury as she was probed and prodded by the
officers who ringed the waiting area. "What is this?" they said when
they found the page of the Grimmerie in her pocket.

"Oh that," she said, thinking fast. "His Highness will want to see that."

"You can bring nothing in with you," they told her, and they took the
page from her.

"By my bloodlines, I can reinstate the office of the Eminent Thropp
tonight and have your leader arrested," she called after them. "Do not
tell me what I can and cannot do in this house."

They paid her no mind and ushered her into a small chamber, bare but for
a couple of upholstered chairs set upon a flowery carpet. Along the
baseboards, dust mice rolled in the draft.

"His Highness, the Emperor Wizard of Oz," said an attendant, and
withdrew. For a minute the Witch sat alone. Then the Wizard walked into
the room.

He was without disguise, a plain-looking older man wearing a
high-collared shirt and a greatcoat, with a watch and fob hanging from a
waistcoat pocket. His head was pink and mottled, and tufts of hair stuck
out above his ears. He mopped his brow with a handkerchief and sat down,
motioning the Witch to sit, too. She did not sit.

"How do you do," he said.

"What do you want with me," she answered.

"There are two things," he said. "There is what I had come here to say
to you, and then there is the matter of what you bring to my attention."

"You talk to me," she said, "for I have nothing to say to you."

"There is no point in beating around the bush," he said. "I would like
to know your intentions about your position as the last Eminence."

"Had I any intention," she said, "it would be none of your business."

"Ah, alas, it is my business, for reunification is under way," said the
Wizard, "even as we speak. I understand that Lady Glinda, bless her
well-meaning foolishness, has sensibly evacuated both the unfortunate
girl and the totemic shoes from the district, which should make
annexation less troublesome. I should like to have those shoes in my
possession, to prevent their giving you ideas. So you see, I need to
know your Intentions in the matter. You were not, I take it, in warm
sympathy with your sister's style of religious tyranny, but I hope you
do not intend to set up shop here. If you do, we must strike a little
bargain-something I was never able to do with your sister."

"There is little for me here," said the Witch, "and I am not suited to
govern anyone, not even myself, it seems."

"Besides, there's the small matter of the army at-is it Red
\Vindmill?-the town below Kiamo Ko."

"So that's why they've been there all these years," said the Witch.

"To keep you in check," he said. "An expense, but there you are."

"To spite you, I should reclaim the title of Eminence," said the Witch.
"But I care little for these foolish people. What the Munchkinlanders do
now is of no interest to me. As long as my father is left unharmed. If
that is all-"

"There is the other matter," he said. His manner became more lively.
"You brought a page with you. I wonder where you got it?"

"That is mine and your people have no right to it."

"What I want is to know where you got it, and where I can find the rest."

"What will you give me if I tell you?"

"What could you want from me?"

This was why she had agreed to meet him. She drew a deep breath, and
said, "To know if Sarima, Dowager Princess of the Atlikis, is still
alive. And where I might find her, and how I might negotiate her freedom."

The Wizard smiled. "How all things work together. Now isn't it
interesting that I could guess of your concern." He waved a hand.

Unseen attendants outside the open door ushered in a dwarf in clean
white trousers and tunic.

No, it wasn't a dwarf, she saw; it was a young woman crouching. Chains
sewn into the collar of her tunic ran through her clothes to her *nldes,
keeping her bent over; the chains were only two or three feet long. The
Witch had to peer to see for sure that it was Nor. She would be sixteen
by now, or seventeen. The age that Elphie had been when she went up to
Crage Hall at Shiz.

"Nor," said the Witch, "Nor, are you there?"

Nor's knees were filthy and her fingers curled around the links of her
bondage. Her hair was cut short, and welts were visible beneath the
patchy tresses. She tossed her head as if listening to music, but she
would not shIft her gaze toward Elphaba.

"Nor, it's Auntie Witch. I've come to bargain for your release, at
last," said the Witch, improvising.

But the Wizard motioned the unseen attendants to usher Nor out of sight.
"I'm afraid that is not possible," he said. "She is my protection from
you, you see."

"The others?" said the Witch. "I must know."

"Everything is undocumented," said the Wizard, "but I believe Sarima and
her sisters are all dead."

The Witch's breath caught in her chest. The last hopes of forgiveness
gone!. . . but the Wizard was continuing. "Perhaps some underling who
had no authority in the matter had an appetite for a bloodbath. It's so
hard to get reliable help in the armed forces."

"Irji?" said the Witch, gripping her elbows.

"Now he had to die," said the Wizard apologetically. "He was the next in
line to be Prince, wasn't he?"

"Tell me it was not brutal," said the Witch. "Oh, tell me so!"

"The Paraffin Necklace," admitted the Wizard. "Well, it was a public
affair. A statement needed to be made. There now, against my better
judgment, I have told you what you wanted to know. Now it is your turn.
Where can I find the book that this page is from?" The Wizard took the
paper out of his pocket and pressed it out onto his lap. His hands were
trembling. He looked at the page. "A spell for the Administration of
Dragons," he said, wonderingly.

"Is that what it is?" she said, surprised. "I could not be sure."

"Of course. You must have a hard time making this out," he said. "You
see, it does not come from this world. It comes from my world."

He was mad, obsessed with other worlds. Like her father.

"You are not telling the truth," said the Witch, hoping she was right.

"Oh, what care I for the truth," he said, "but I am truthful, as it
happens."

"Why would you want that?" said the Witch, trying to buy some time,
trying to figure out how she could barter for Nor's life. "I don't even
know what it is. I don't believe you do either."

"I do," he said. "This is an ancient manuscript of magic, generated in a
world far away from this one. It was long thought to be merely leg.
endary, or else destroyed in the dark onslaughts of the northern
invaders. It had been removed from our world for safety by a wizard more
capable than I. It is why I came to Oz in the first place," he
continued, almost talking to himself, as old men are prone to do.
"Madame Blavatsky located it in a crystal ball, and I made the
appropriate sacrifices and-arrangements- to travel here forty years ago.
I was a young man, full of ardor and failure. I had not intended to rule
a country here, but just to find this document and return it to its own
world, and to study its secrets there."

"What kind of sacrifices?" she said. "You do not stint from murder here."

"Murder is a word used by the sanctimonious," he said. "It is an
expedient expression with which they condemn any courageous action
beyond their ken. What I did, what I do, cannot be murder. For, coming
from another world, I cannot be held accountable to the silly
conventions of a naive civilization. I am beyond that lisping childish
recital of wrongs and rights." His eyes did not burn as he spoke; they
were sunk behind veils of cold blue detachment.

"If I give the Grimmerie to you, will you go?" she said. "Give me Nor
and take your brand of evil and leave us alone at last?"

"I am too old to travel now," he said, "and why should I give up what I
have worked for all these years?"

"Because I will use this book and destroy you with it if you don't," she
said.

"You cannot read it," he said. "You are of Oz and you cannot do such a
thing.

"I can read more of it than you suspect," she said. "I do not know what
it all means. I have seen pages about unleashing the hidden energies of
matter. I have seen pages about tampering with the orderly flow of time.
I have seen disquisitions about weapons too vile to use, about how to
poison water, about how to breed a more docile population. There are
diagrams of weapons of torture. Though the drawings and the words seem
misty to my eyes, I can continue to learn. I am not too old."

"Those are ideas of great interest to our times," he said, though he
seemed surprised that she had taken in as much as she had.

"Not to me," she said. "You have done enough already. If I give it to
you, will you surrender Nor to me?"

"You should not trust my promise," he said, sighing. "Really, my child."
But he continued to stare at the page she had handed over to him. "One
might learn how to subjugate a dragon to one's own purposes," he mused,
and flipped the page over to read what was on the back.

"Please," she said. "I think I have never begged for anything before in
my life. But I beg of you. It is not right that you should be here.
Assuming for a moment you can sometimes tell the truth-go back to that
other world, go anywhere, just leave the throne. Leave us alone. Take
the book with you, do with it what you will. Let me accomplish at least
this in my life."

"In exchange for my telling you about the kith and kin of your beloved
Fiyero, you are to tell me where this book is," he reminded her.

"Well, I won't," she answered. "I have revised my offer. Give me Nor,
and I will get you the Grimmerie. The book is already hidden so deeply
that you will never find it. You have not the skill." She hoped she was
being persuasive.

He stood and pocketed the page. "I shall not have you executed," he
said. "At least, not at this audience. I will have that book, for here
or for there. You cannot bind me to a promise, I am beyond being bound
by words. I will think of what you have said. But meanwhile, I will keep
my young slave-girl at my side. For she is my defense against your anger."

"Give her to me!" said the Witch. "Now, now, now: Act like a man, not
like a mountebank! Give her to me and I will send you that book!"

"It is for others to bargain," said the Wizard. Rather than sounding
offended, he seemed merely depressed, as if he were talking to himself
instead of to her. "I do not bargain. But I do think I will wait and see
how the reunification with Munchkinland goes, and if you do not
interfere, I may be kindly disposed to think about what you have said.
But I do not bargain."

The Witch breathed in deeply. "I have met you before, you know," she
said. "You once granted me an interview in the Throne Room, when I was a
schoolgirl from Shiz."

"Is that so?" he said. "Oh, of course-you must have been one of the
darling girls of Madame Morrible. That wonderful aid and helpmeet. In
her dotage now, but in her heyday, what she taught me about breaking the
spirits of willful young girls! No doubt, like the rest, you were taken
with her?"

"She tried to recruit me to serve some master. Was it you?"

"Who can say. We were always hatching some plot or other. She was good
fun. She would never be as crude as that"-he pointed to the open door
through which crouching Nor could still be seen, humming to herself-"she
could manage girl students with much greater finesse!" He was about to
leave the room, but he turned back at the door. "You know, now I
remember. It was she who warned me about you. She told me you had
betrayed her, you had rejected her offers. She was the one who advised
me to have you watched. It is because of her that we found out about
your little romance with the diamond-skinned prince."

"No!"

"So you met me before. I had forgotten. In what form did I appear?" She
had to clutch herself to keep from vomiting. "You were a skeleton with
lighted bones, dancing in a storm."

"Oh, yes. That was clever, that was. Were you impressed?"

"Sir," she said, "I think you are a very bad wizard."

"And you," he answered, stung, "are only a caricature of a witch."

"Wait," she called as he headed away through the panel, "wait, please.
How will I receive your answer?"

"I will send a messenger to you before the year is out," he said. The
panel slammed tightly behind him.

She fell to her knees, her forehead dropping almost to the floor. At her
sides her fists clenched. She had no intention of surrendering the
Grimmerie to such a monster, ever. If need be she would die to keep it

out of his hands. But could she arrange a deception so that he would
surrender Nor to her first?


She left a few days later, first making sure that her father was not to
be turned out of his room in Colwen Grounds. He did not want to join her
in the Vinkus; he was too old to make the journey. Besides, he thought
that Shell would come back sooner or later looking for him. The Witch
knew that Frex wouldn't live long, grieving so for Nessarose. She tried
to put away her anger at him when she said good-bye for what she
suspected was the last time.

As she strode through the forecourt of Colwen Grounds, she crossed paths
once again with Glinda. But both women averted their eyes and hurried
their feet along their opposing ways. For the Witch, the sky was a huge
boulder pressing down on her. For Glinda it was much the same. But
Glinda wheeled about, and cried out, "Oh Elphie!"

The Witch did not turn. They never saw each other again.


5
______
She knew that she couldn't afford the time to mount a full-scale chase
against this Dorothy. Glinda ought to be hiring accomplices to track
those shoes down; it was the least she could do, with her money and her
connections. Still, the Witch stopped here and there along the Yellow
Brick Road, and asked those taking an afternoon tipple at a roadside
public house if they had seen a foreign girl in blue and white checks,
walking with a small dog. There was some animated discussion as the
patrons of the pub struggled to decide whether the green Witch intended
the child harm-apparently the child had that rare skill of enchanting
strangers- but when they had satisfied themselves that no harm was
likely, they responded. Dorothy had come through a few days ago, and it
was said that she had spent the night with someone a mile or two down
the road, before continuing on. "The well-kept house with the yellow
domed roof," they said, "and the minaret-chimney. You can't miss it."

The Witch found it, and she found Boq on a bench in the yard, dandling a
baby on his knee.

"You!" he said. "I know why you're here! Milla, look, who's here,

come quickly! It's Miss Elphaba, from Crage Hall! In the flesh!"

Milla came, a couple of naked children clutching her apron strings.
Flushed from laundry, she lifted her straggling hair out of her eyes and
said, "Oh my, and we forgot to dress in our finery today. Look who's
come to laugh at us in our rustic state."

"Isn't she something!" said Boq fondly.

Milla had kept her figure, though there were four or five offspring in
evidence, and no doubt more out of sight. Boq had gone barrelchested,
and his fine spiky hair had grown prematurely silver, giving him a
dignity he had never had as an undergraduate. "We heard about your
sister's death, Elphie," he said, "and we sent our condolences to your
father. We didn't know where you were. We heard you had come here
following Nessie's ascension to governor of Munchkinland, but we didn't
know where you went back to when you left. It's good to see you again."

The sourness that she had felt over Glinda's betrayal was ameliorated by
Boq's common courtesy and direct speech. She had always liked him, for
his passion and for his sense. "You are a sight, you are," she said.

"Rikla, get up off that stool and let our guest have a seat," said Milla
to one of the children. "And Yellowgage, run to Uncle's and borrow some
rice and onions and yogurt. Hurry now, so I can start a meal."

"I won't be staying, Milla, I'm in a hurry," said the Witch.
"Yellowgage, don't bother. I'd love to spend some time, and catch up on
all your news, but I'm trying to locate this girl stranger, who passed
by here, someone said, and stayed a night or two."

Boq shoved his hands in his pockets. "Well, she did that, Elphie. What
do you want with her?"

"I want my sister's shoes. They belong to me."

Boq seemed as surprised as Glinda had. "You weren't ever into fancy
trappings like society shoes," he said.

"Yes, well, perhaps I'm about to make my belated debut in Emerald City
society at last, and have a coming-out ball." But she was being tart
with Boq, and didn't want that. "It's a personal matter, Boq; I want the
shoes. My father made them and they're mine now, and Glinda gave them to
this girl without my permission. And woe betide Munchkinland if they
fall into the Wizard's hands. What is she like, this Dorothy?"

"We adored her," he said. "Plain and straightforward as mustard seed.
She shouldn't have any problems, although it's a long walk for a child,
from here to the Emerald City. But all who see her are bound to help
her, I'd say. We sat up till the moon rose, chatting about her home, and
Oz, and what she might expect on the road. She hasn't traveled widely
before this."

"How charming," said the Witch. "How novel for her."

"Are you brewing one of your campaigns?" said Milla suddenly, cannily.
"You know, Elphie, when you didn't come back from the Emerald City with
Glinda that time, everyone said you'd gone mad, and had become an assassin."

"People always did like to talk, didn't they? That's why I call myself a
witch now: the Wicked Witch of the West, if you want the full glory of
it. As long as people are going to call you a lunatic anyway, why not
get the benefit of it? It liberates you from convention."

"You're not wicked," said Boq.

"How do you know? It's been so long," said the Witch, but she smiled at him.

Boq returned the smile, warmly. "Glinda used her glitter beads, and you
used your exotic looks and background, but weren't you just doing the
same thing, trying to maximize what you had in order to get what you
wanted? People who claim that they're evil are usually no worse than the
rest of us." He sighed. "It's people who claim that they're good, or
anyway better than the rest of us, that you have to be wary of."

"like Nessarose," said Milla meanly, but she was telling the truth, too,
and they all nodded.

The Witch took one of Boq's children on her knee and clucked at it
absentmindedly. She liked children no more than she ever had, but years
of dealing with monkeys had given her an insight into the infant
mentality she had never grasped before. The baby cooed and wet itself
with pleasure. The Witch handed it back quickly before the wet could
soak through her skirt.

"Regardless of the shoes," said the Witch, "do you think a child like
that should be sent unarmed straight into the jaws of the Wizard? Has
she been told what a monster he is?"

Boq looked uncomfortable. "Well, Elphie, I don't like speaking ill of

the Wizard. I'm afraid there are too many pitchers with big ears in this
community, and you never know who is on what side. Between you and me, I
hope Nessa's death will result in some sort of a sensible government,
but if we are overrun with an invading army in two months I wouldn't
want it bruited about that I'd been bad-mouthing the invaders. And there
are rumors of reunffication."

"Oh, don't tell me you're hoping for that," she said, "not you too."

"I'm not hoping for anything, except for peace and quiet," he said. "I
have enough trouble getting crops out of these rocky fields. That's what
I was in Shiz to learn, do you remember?-agriculture. I've put the best
of my efforts into our small holdings, and we only manage to eke out a
living."

But he looked rather proud about it, and so did Milla.

"And I guess you have a couple of Cows in your barn," said the Witch.

"Oh, you're testy. Of course we don't. Do you think I could forget what
we worked for-you and Crope and Tibbett and I? It was the high point of
a very quiet life."

"You didn't have to have a quiet life, Boq," said the Witch.

"Don't be superior. I didn't say I was sorry for it, neither the
excitement of a righteous campaign nor the relief of a family and a
farm. Did we ever do any good back then?"

"If nothing else," said the Witch, "we helped Doctor Dillamond. He was
very much alone in his work, you know. And the philosophical basis for
the resistance grew out of his pioneering hypotheses. His findings
outlived him; they still do." She did not mention her own experiments
with the winged monkeys. Her practical applications were directly
derived from Doctor Dillamond's theories.

"We had no idea we were at the end of a golden age," Boq said, sighing.
"When's the last time you saw an Animal in the professions?"

"Ah, don't get me started," the Witch said. She couldn't stay seated.

"Do you remember, you hoarded those notes of Dillamond's. You never
really let me know what they were all about. Did you make any use of them?"

"I learned enough from his research to keep questioning," said the
Witch, but she felt bombastic, and wanted to stop talking. It made her

feel too sad, too desperate. Milla saw this, and with a brusque charity
declared, "Those times are over and gone, and good riddance to them,
too. We were hopelessly high-spirited. Now we're the thick-waisted
generation, dragging along our children behind us and carrying our
parents on our backs. And we're in charge, while the figures who used to
command our respect are wasting away."

"The Wizard doesn't," said the Witch.

"Well, Madame Morrible does," said Milla. "Or so Shenshen told me in her
last letter."

"Oh?" said the Witch.

"Yes, that's right," said Boq. "Though from her bed of pain Madame
Morrible continues to advise our Emperor Wizard on policy matters about
education. I'm surprised that Glinda didn't send Dorothy to Shiz to
study with Madame Morrible. Instead she directed her to the Emerald City."

The Witch could not picture Dorothy, but for a moment she saw the
stooped figure of Nor. She saw a crowd of girls like Nor, in chains and
yokes, drifting around Madame Morrible the way those schoolgirls had,
all those years ago.

"Elphie, sit down again, you don't look well," said Boq. "This is a hard
time for you. You didn't get along well with Nessarose, I seem to remember."

But the Witch didn't want to think of her sister. "It's a rather ugly
name, Dorothy," she said. "Don't you think?" She sat back down heavily,
and Boq relaxed on a stool a few feet away.

"I don't know," he said. "Actually we had a chat about it. She said that
the King of her homeland was a man named Theodore. Her teacher explained
that the name meant Gift of God, and that this was a sign that he was
ordained to be King or Prime Minister. Dorothy remarked that Dorothy was
a sort of backward Theodore, but the teacher looked it up and said no,
Dorothy meant Goddess of Gifts."

"Well, I know what she can give me," said the Witch. "She can give me my
shoes. Are you trying to say that you think she was a gift of God, or
that she is some sort of queen or goddess? Boq, you used not to go in
for superstition."

"I'm not saying anything of the sort. I'm having a conversation on word
derivations," he answered calmly. "Let others more enlightened

than I ferret out the hidden meanings of life. But I do think it
interesting that her name so resembles the name of her king."

Milla said, "Well, I think she's a holy little girl, ordinary and
sanctified just as any child is, no more no less. Yellowgage, get your
paws off that lemon tart, I can see you from here, or I'll whip you from
now to eternity. The Dorothy child reminded me of what Ozma might have
been like, or might yet be like, if she ever comes out of the deep sleep
she's supposed to be enchanted into."

"She sounds like a little fright," said the Witch. "Ozma, Dorothy- all
this talk about savior children. I have always detested it."

"You know what it is?" said Boq, thinkñ g carefully. "Since we're
talking about the old days, it comes back to me . . . I wonder if you
remember that medieval painting I once found in the library at Three
Queens? The one with the female figure cradling the beast? There was a
sort of tenderness and awfulness in that painting. Well, there's
something in Dorothy that reminds me of that unnamed figure. You might
even call it the Unnamed Goddess-is that sacrilegious or what? Dorothy
has this sweet charity toward her dog, a pretty dreadful little beast.
And whiffy? You wouldn't believe how repugnant. Once she swooped the dog
up in her arms and bent over it, crooning to it, in just the same pose
as that medieval figure. Dorothy is a child, but she has a heaviness of
bearing like an adult, and a gravity you don't often find in the young.
It's very becoming. Elphie, I was charmed by her, to tell you the
truth." He cracked a couple of walnuts and eastern macarands, and passed
them around. "I am sure you will be, too."

"I would like to avoid her at all costs, at the sound of it," said the
Witch. "The last thing I'm in a mood for these days is to be charmed by
juvenile purity. But I insist on recovering my property."

"The shoes are very magic, are they?" said Milla. "Or is it just symbolic?"

"How do I even know?" said the Witch. "I haven't ever put them on. But
if I could get them and they could walk me out of this parlous life, I
wouldn't be sorry."

"Anyway, everyone blamed the shoes for Nessa's tyranny. I think it's
good of Glinda to have gotten them out of Munchkinland. The child is
smuggling them abroad without even knowing it."

"Glinda has sent the girl to the Emerald City," said the Witch

pointedly. "If the Wizard gets hold of them, it'll be a license to march
into Munchkinland. And you're fools to sit on the fence as if it makes
no difference whether he does or not."

"You'll stay for something, at least some tea," said Milla soothingly.
"Look, I've had Clarinda make a fresh pot, and we've saffron cream.
Remember the saffron cream party after Ama Clutch's funeral?"

The Witch breathed heavily for a moment; there was a pain in her
esophagus. She did not like to remember those trying times. And Glinda
had known full well that Madame Morrible was behind the death of Ama
Clutch. Now as Lady Glinda she was part of the same ruling class. It was
hideous. And Dorothy, whatever her origins, was still only a child, and
they were using her to help rid Munchkinland of those damned totemic
shoes. Or to get the shoes to the Wizard. Just as Madame Morrible had
used her students as Adepts.

"I can't stop here chattering like an idiot," she cried, startling them,
spilling the bowl of nuts to the ground. "Didn't we waste enough time
talking ourselves to death in school?" She grabbed for her broom and her
hat.

Boq looked startled and almost fell backward off his seat. "Well,
Elphie, why are you taking offense-?"

She was beyond answering. She whirled in a small cyclone of black skirts
and scarves, and ran out to the road.

She hurried on foot along the Yellow Brick Road, hardly realizing that a
plan was forming in her mind. But she was thinking so hard that for a
while she completely forgot she was carrying her broom, and it was only
when she paused to rest, and leaned on it, that she remembered it.

Boq, Glinda, even her father, Frex: how disappointing they all seemed
now. Had these folks deteriorated in virtue since their youth, or had
she been too naive then to see them for what they were? She felt
disgusted with people, and longed to be home. She was too out of sorts
to seek lodging in an inn or a public house. It was warm enough to stay
outside and rest.

She lay awake at the edge of a field of barley. The moon rose, huge as
it sometimes is when first breaking over the horizon. It backlit a stake
with a crossbar, standing as if awaiting a body to crucify, or a
scarecrow to hang.

Why hadn't she joined forces with Nessarose, and raised armies against
the Wizard? Old family resentments had gotten in the way.

Nessarose had asked for help in governing Munchkinland, and the Witch
had denied her request. Instead the Witch had gone back to Kiamo Ko
these seven years. She had squandered the chance to merge forces with
her sister.

Virtually every campaign she'd set out for herself had ended in failure.

She squirmed in the light of the moon, and at midnight, tortured by the
thoughts of Nessa's death-the physical fact of being squished like a bug
finally taking on some imaginative shape in the Witch's fantasies- she
arose, and took a new path. Dorothy would no doubt follow the Yellow
Brick Road to the Emerald City, and someone as exotic as she could be
easily located anywhere along the route. The Witch would go and try to
accomplish the task set out for herself fifteen years ago. Madame
Morrible still waited to be killed.


6
______
Shiz was a money factory now. The Colleges, occupying an historic
district, remained largely unchanged, but for some contemporary
dormitories and flashy athletic buildings. Outside the university
district, however, Shiz had thrived in the war-alert economy. A huge
monument in brass and marble, The Spirit of Empire, dominated what was
left of Railway Square, and the air and light around it was cut off by
hulking industrial buildings, spewing black columns of filth into the
air. The bluestone was now grimestone. The air itself seemed warm and
earnest-the ten thousand exhalations of a city panting every second to
increase its wealth. The trees were shriveled and gray. And not a single
Animal in sight.

Crage Hall looked absurdly older and newer at once. The Witch chose not
to bother the porter, and flew herself up over the wall into the kitchen
garden, where once Boq had tumbled off an adjoining roof, almost into
her lap. The back lawn beyond the orchard was gone, and in its place
stood a stone structure, above whose gleaming poxite doors was carved
THE SIR CHUFFREY AND LADY GLINDA CONSERVATORY OF MUSIC AND THE
THEATRICAL ARTS.


Three girls came hurrying down the path, chattering away, their books
clutched close to their bosoms. They gave the Witch a start, as if they
were ghosts of Nessarose, Glinda and herself. She had to hold on to

her broomstick and steady herself. She had not taken in how far she had
come, how much she had aged.

"I need to see the Head," she said, startling them.

But one recovered her youthful aplomb and pointed the way. The Head's
office was still in Main Hall. "You'll find her in," they said. "She's
always in at this hour of the morning, having tea by herself or with
contributors."

Security must be greatly relaxed if none of them questions my being in
the kitchen garden, thought the Witch. All the better; I may even escape
unstopped.

The Head had a secretary now, a plump older gentleman with a goatee.
"She's not expecting you?" he said. "I'll see if she's free." He
returned and said, "Madame Head will see you now. Would you like to kave
your broom in the umbrella stand?"

"How kind. No thanks," said the Witch, and walked through.

The Head rose from a leather armchair. She wasn't Madame Morrible
anymore; she was a small pinky white woman with copper-colored curls and
an energetic manner. "I didn't catch your name?" she said politely.
"You're an old girl, but I'm a new one"-she laughed at her own
witticism, and the Witch did not-"and I'm afraid I haven't yet grasped
the truth: dozens of old girls come back every month to relive the
pleasant moments of their growing up here. Please, may I have your name,
and I'll call for some tea."

With some effort, the Witch said, "I was called Miss Elphaba when I was
here, more years ago than I realized could be possible. In fact I won't
take tea, I can't stay long. I was misinformed. I was hoping to see
Madame Morrible? Do you know of her whereabouts?"

"Well, is this good luck or is it bad?" said the current Head. "Up till
very recently she has spent part of every semester in the Emerald City,
consulting with His Highness himself, on education policies through
Loyal Oz. But she's recently returned to her retirement apartment in the
Doddery-I'm sorry, that's a joke of the girls and it slipped out. It is
called the Daughter Building, really, as it was financed by the generous
daughters of Crage Hall, our alums. You see, her health has
deteriorated, and-though I hate to be the bearer of bad tidings-I fear
she is very near the end."

"I'd love to pop in and say hello," said the Witch. Playacting had never
suited her, and it was only because the new Head was so young, such a
fool, such a girl herself, that the Witch could get away with it. "I was
a great favorite of hers, you know; it would give her a wonderful surprise."

"I'll call Grommetik to take you there," said the Head. "But I should
ask Madame Morrible's nurse first if she's up to a visit."

"Don't call Grommetik, I can find my own way. I will chat with the
nurse, and I will only stop in for a moment. And then I'll come back
here before I leave, I promise, and perhaps I can see my way clear to
making a contribution toward the annual fund, or some little endowment
drive you must be mounting at present?"

To the best of her recollection she had never lied before in her life.


The Doddery was a broad round tower, like a squat silo, sitting adjacent
to the chapel in which Doctor Dillamond had been eulogized. A scout,
passing by with buckets and brooms, told the Witch that Madame Morrible
was one flight up, behind the door with the Wizard's standard mounted on it.

A minute later the Witch stood looking at the Wizard's standard. A
balloon with a basket beneath it, commemorating his spectacular arrival
in the Emerald City, and crossed swords below. From a few feet away it
looked like a huge skull, and the basket a leering jaw, and the crossed
swords a forbidding .IC. The doorknob turned under her tug, and she
entered the apartments.

There were several rooms, all cluttered with school memorabilia and
tokens of esteem from various Emerald City institutions, including the
Palace of the Emperor. The Witch passed through a sort of parlor, with a
fire burning in it despite the warmth of the season, and a
kitchen-scullery area. To one side was a water closet, and the Witch
could hear the sound of someone sobbing inside, and the blowing of a
nose. The Witch pushed a dresser against the door, and continued on into
a sleeping chamber.

Madame Morrible was propped halfway up in a huge bed shaped like a
pfenix. A carved gold pfenix neck and head emerged from the head' board,
and the sides of the bed simulated the bird's wings. Its feet joined at
the footboard. The idea of its tail feathers had apparently defeated the
ingenuity of the cabinetmaker, for there weren't any. It was a bird in
an awkward position, actually, as if being blown backward through the air by


7
______
The Witch had waited fifteen years, but her timing was oil by five
minutes. So the temptation to go back and dismember Grommetik was
intense. But the Witch resisted. She didn't care if she was sentenced
and executed for the battery of Madame Morrible's corpse, but she didn't
want to be caught because of vengeance against a machine.

She took a meal at a caf? and glanced at the tabloids. Then she wandered
in the shopping district. Never one for frippery, she was intensely
bored, but she wanted to hear them talking about the death of Madame
Morrible. She was waiting for the reviews, as it were. And she would
never come back to Shiz, she suspected, nor to any other city. This was
her last chance to see Loyal Oz in action.

As the afternoon wore on, however, she began to worry. What if there

gunshot, or as if laboring in a human way to deliver itself of the great
mound of flesh sitting on its stomach and reclining against its breast.

On the floor was a pile of the financial papers, and an old-fashioned
pair of spectacles was set on top of them. But the time for reading was
past.

Madame Morrible rested in a gray mound, her hands folded upon her belly,
and her eyes open and shallow, without motion. She was still like a
mammoth Carp, in all but the fishy smell-a candle had been so recently
lit that the stink of the match's sulfur still lingered in the room.

The Witch pulled at her broom. From the other room came a pounding on
the door of the water closet. "Did you think you would always be safe by
hiding behind schoolchildren?" said the Witch, beyond herself, beyond
caring, and she raised her broom. But Madame Morrible made a sluggish,
indifferent corpse.

The Witch struck Madame Morrible with the flat of the broom, on the side
of the head and the face. It made no mark. Then the Witch searched the
mantelpiece for the testimonial trophy with the biggest marble base, and
she bashed in Madame Morrible's skull with it, with a sound like a
splitting of firewood.

She left it in the old woman's arms. Its statement could be read by all,
except the carved pfenix who would be looking at it upside down. IN
APPRECIATION OF EVERYTHING YOU HAVE DONE, it said.

was a cover-up? What if the current Head, to avoid scandal, hushed up
the news of the assault? Especially a crime against one so close to the
Emperor? The Witch began to fret that she would be denied the credit for
her deed. She racked her brains for someone to confess to, someone who
would be sure to rush to the authorities. What about Crope, or Shenshen,
or Pfannee? Or, for that matter, the Margreave of Tenmeadows, nasty Avaric?

The town house of the Margreave was set out in the deer park at the edge
of Shiz. It was late afternoon by the time she reached the Emperor's
Green, as it was now called. Private residences were dotted about the
expanse, each protected by its own security force, high walls lined with
broken glass bottles, fierce dogs. The Witch had a way with dogs and
high walls didn't bother her. She welcomed herself over the wall onto a
terrace, where a maid tending a floxflower bed had a conniption and
resigned on the spot. The Witch found Avaric in his study, signing some
documents with a huge plumed pen, and sipping some honey-colored whiskey
in a crystal glass. "I said that I won't come out for cocktails, you're
on your own, can't you listen?" he began, but then he saw who it was.

"However did you get in here without being announced?" he said. "I know
you. Don't I?"

"Of course you do, Avaric. I'm the green girl of Crage Hall."

"Oh yes. What was your name?"

"My name was Elphaba."

He lit a lamp-the afternoon was darkening, or perhaps clouding over
now-and they looked at each other. "Have a seat, then. I suppose if
society forces itself in one's study door, one has no further right to
deny it. A drink?"

"A wee one."

Alone of them all, he, who had been too handsome to believe, had grown
better looking. He wore his hair swept back; it was rich and full, the
color of polished nickel, and he clearly had the benefit of a life of
exercise and rest, for his figure was strong and slim, his bearing
erect, his color good. Those born with advantages know how to capitalize
on them, observed the Witch, after her first sip.

"To what do I owe this honor?" he said, seating himself across from her
with a freshened drink in his own hands. "Or is the whole world playing
reprises today?"

"What do you mean by that?"

"I had a walk at noon," he said, "in the park, with my bodyguards, as
usual. And I came across a carnival entertainment set up there. It opens
tomorrow, I think, and the park will be mobbed with clever students,
household servants and factory workers, and with greasy gabbling
families from Little Glikkus. There were the usual cast of children
caught up in the allure of a good circus act, mostly teenage boys
helping out, no doubt having run away from tiresome families and small
provincial towns. But the guy in charge was a bloody little dwarf."

"Bloody, how do you mean?" asked the Witch.

"I mean offensive, pardon my slang. We've all seen dwarves before,
that's not the point. It's just that I had seen this very dwarf before.
I recognized him from years ago."

"Fancy that."

"Well, I wouldn't have thought anything more of it, but then you show up
this afternoon from more or less the same zone of memory. Weren't you
there, yourself? Didn't you go with us to the Philosophy Club that
night, we got so drunk, and they had that charmed-sex thing, and that
effeminate Tibbett got so wasted and lost his mind and just about
everything else when that Tiger. . . ? You were there, surely."

"I don't think I was."

"Weren't you? Boq was, squiggly little Boq, and Pfannee, and Fiyero, I
think, and some others. Don't you remember? There was that hag who
called herself Yackle, and the dwarf, and they let us in, and they were
so creepy? Anyway, doesn't matter-it's just-"

"Not Yaclde," said the Witch. She dropped her drink. "This is insanity,
my ears are having delusions. Everyone is right, I'm paranoid. No,
Avaric, I refuse to admit you could remember someone's name for twenty
years like that."

"She was a balding gypsy woman with a wig, and sort of chestnutcolored
eyes, in thick with this dwarf. I don't know what he was called. Why
shouldn't I remember it?"

"You didn't remember my name."

"You didn't scare me half as much. In fact you never scared me." He
laughed. "I was probably pretty nasty to you. I was an asshole back then."

"You still are."

"Well, practice makes perfect, and more than once I've been called a
perfect asshole."

"I came by to tell you that I killed Madame Morrible today," said the
\Vitch. She was so proud of the phrase; it seemed less false when said
aloud. Maybe it was true. "I killed her. I wanted someone who would be
believed to know about it."

"Oh, why ever did you do that?"

"You know, the reasons just reassemble themselves in different patterns
every time I think about It." She sat up a little straighter. "Because
she deserved it."

"The Avenging Angel ofJustice is now green?"

"A pretty good disguise, don't you think?" They both grinned.

"So about this Madame Morrible, whom you claim to have killed? Did you
know that she gathered your friends and associates together and gave us
a little lecture after you'd run away?"

"You were never my friend."

"I was too near to be excused. I remember the situation. Nessarose was
mortified and shattered by the whole thing. Madame Morrible took out
your records and read to us a profile of your character as assessed by
your various teachers. We were warned about your spikiness, your
frInginess, what were the words they used? I can't remember that, they
weren't memorable words. But we were told you might try to recruit us in
some sort of juvenile attempt to galvanize some sort of student
uprising. You were to be avoided at all costs."

"And Nessarose was mortified, well, that figures," said the Witch grimly.

"Glinda too," said Avaric. "She went through another slide, like the one
she went into after Doctor Dillamond fell on his magnifying lens-"

"Oh please, is that hoary old lie still in circulation?"

"-oh all right, was brutally murdered by brigands unknown, have it your
way. Brigands in the form of Madame Morrible, that's what you mean me to
suppose. So why really did you do it?"

"Madame Morrible had a choice. No one was better placed than she to see
that her students got an education and not a brainwashing. By hooking up
with the Emerald City, she sold out all her students who believed that a
liberal education meant learning to think for themselves.

Besides, she was a vile fiend, and she did conspire to have Doctor
Dillamond murdered. No matter what you say."

But the Witch stopped herself short, hearing in her words about

Madame Morrible-she had a choice-an echo of what the Elephant

Princess Nastoya had once said to her: No one controls your destiny.

Even at the very worst-there is always choice.

Avaric was rattling on. "And you've had her murdered. Two wrongs don't
make a right, as we boys used to chant on the playground, usually when
we were on the ground with someone's knee on our groin. Why don't you
stay for a meal? We've got guests, a clever bunch."

"So you can call the police? No thanks."

"I won't call the police. You and I, we're above petulant justice like
that."

The Witch believed him. "All right," she said. "Who are you married to,
by the way? Did you get married to Pfannee, or Shenshen, or someone
else? I can't remember."

"Whoever," said Avaric, pouring another finger of whiskey. "I can't keep
small details in my mind, never could."


The Margreave's pantry was fulsome, his cook a genius, and his wine
cellar unparalleled. The guests tucked into snails and garlic, roast
crest of fallowhen with cilantro and clementine chutney, and the Witch
allowed herself a sumptuous helping of lime tart with saffron cream. The
crystal goblets were never empty. The conversation was exalted and
loopy, and by the time the Margreavess led them to the comfortable
chairs in the drawing room, the plaster applique on the ceiling seemed
to swirl like the cigarette smoke.

"Why, you're flushed," said Avaric. "You ought to have been a tippler
all along, Elphaba."

"I'm not sure red wine agrees with me," she said.

"You're in no condition to go anywhere. The maid will do up one of the
corner rooms. It's lovely, there's a view clear to the pagoda on the
island."

"I don't care for prepared views."

"Don't you want to wait for the morning papers, to see if they got it
right? If they got it at all?"

"I'll ask you to send me one. No, I must go, I feel the need of some
fresh air. Avaric-Madame-friends-it's been a surprise and I suppose a
pleasure." But she felt grudging as she said it.

"A pleasure to some," said the Margreavess, who hadn't approved of the
conversation. "I think it improper to talk about evil all during a meal.
It spoils the digestion."

"Oh, but come," the Witch said, "is it only in youth that we can have
the nerve to ask ourselves such serious questions?"

"Well, I stick with my suggestion," said Avaric. "Evil isn't doing bad
things, it's feeling bad about them afterward. There's no absolute value
to behavior. First of all-"

"Institutional inertia," claimed the Witch. "But whatever is the great
attraction of absolute power anyway?"

"That's why I say it's merely an affliction of the psyche, like vanity
or greed," said a copper magnate. "And we all know vanity and greed can
produce some pretty astounding results in human affairs, not all of them
reprehensible."

"It's an absence of good, that's all," said his paramour, an agony aunt
for the Shiz Informer. "The nature of the world is to be calm, and
enhance and support life, and evil is an absence of the inclination of
matter to be at peace."

"Pigspittle," said Avaric. "Evil is an early or primitive stage of moral
development. All children are fiends by nature. The criminals among us
are only those who didn't progress..

"I think it's a presence, not an absence," said an artist. "Evil's an
incarnated character, an incubus or a succubus. It's an other. It's not us."

"Not even me?" said the Witch, playing the part more vigorously than she
expected. "A self-confessed murderer?"

"Oh go on with you," said the artist, "we all of us show ourselves in
our best light. That's just normal vanity."

"Evil isn't a thing, it's not a person, it's an attribute like beauty . .

"It's a power, like wind . .

"It's an infection . .

"It's metaphysical, essentially: the corruptibility of creation-"

"Blame it on the Unnamed God, then."

"But did the Unnamed God create evil intentionally, or was it just a
mistake in creation?"

"It's not of air and eternity, evil isn't; it's of earth; it's physical,
a disjointedness between our bodies and our souls. Evil is inanely
corporeal, humans causing one another pain, no more no less-"

"I like pain, if I'm wearing calfskin chaps and have my wrists tied
behind me-"

"No, you're all wrong, our childhood religion had it right: Evil is
moral at its heart-the selection of vice over virtue; you can pretend
not to know, you can rationalize, but you know it in your conscience-"

"Evil is an act, not an appetite. How many haven't wanted to slash the
throat of some boor across the dining room table? Present company
excepted of course. Everyone has the appetite. If you give in to it, it,
that act is evil. The appetite is normal."

"Oh no, evil is repressing that appetite. I never repress any appetite."

"I won't have this talk in my drawing room," said the Margreavess, near
tears. "You've been behaving all night as if an old woman hadn't been
slaughtered in her bedclothes. Didn't she have a mother too? Didn't she
have a soul?"

Avaric yawned and said, "You're so tender and naive. When it's not
embarrassing it's quite appealing."

The Witch stood up, sat down quickly, and stood up again, aided by her
broom.

"Why did you do it?" asked the hostess with spirit.

The Witch shrugged. "For fun? Maybe evil is an art form."

But as she wobbled toward the door, she said, "You know, you're all a
pack of fools. You ought to have turned me in instead of entertaining me
all evening."

"You entertained us," said Avaric broadly, gallantly. "This'll end up
being the dinner party of the season. Even if you've been lying all
evening about killing this old schoolmarm. What a treat." The dinner
guests drolly applauded her.

"The real thing about evil," said the Witch at the doorway, "isn't any
of what you said. You figure out one side of it-the human side, say- and
the eternal side goes into shadow. Or vice versa. It's like the old saw:

'What does a dragon in its shell look like? Well no one can ever tell,
for as

soon as you break the shell to see, the dragon is no longer in its
shell. The real disaster of this inquiry is that it is the nature of
evil to be secret."


8
______
The moon was up again, a little less swollen than the night before. The
Witch didn't trust herself to ride on the broom, so she meandered in a
zigzaggy way across the greensward. She would find a place to nap
outside of the claustrophobia of a society den.

She came upon the construction that Avaric had talked about. It was an
old, early tiktok thing, a sort of portable stupa made of carved wood
and figurines, too variegated and numerous for the Witch to comprehend
tonight. Perhaps there was a running board where she could rest
underneath, a platform elevated just a couple of inches off the dampish
ground. She peered, and moved forward.

"And where do you think you're going?"

A Munchkinlander, no, a dwarf, stood in her way. He had a cudgel in one
hand, and was thwacking it into the thick leathery palm of his other hand.

"Going to sleep, when I can," she said. "So you're the dwarf, and this
is the thing Avaric talked about."

"The Clock of the Time Dragon," he said, "open for business tomorrow
night, and not until."

"I'll be dead and gone by tomorrow night," she said.

"No you won't," he answered.

"Well, gone anyway." She looked at it and straightened up, then
something came back to her. "I wonder how you knew Yackle," she said.

"Oh, Yackle," he said. "Who doesn't know Yackle? Not such a surprise."

"Was she killed today?" said the Witch. "By any chance?"

"No chance," he answered.

"Who are you?" She was afraid, suddenly, after all this headiness of
sorrow and violence.

"Oh, the least significant little one," he said.

"Who do you work for?"

"Who haven't I worked for?" said the dwarf. "The devil is a very big

angel, but a very little man. But I have no name in this world, so don't
bother with me."

"I'm drunk and disorderly," she said, "and I cannot take any more
riddles. I killed someone today, I can kill you too."

"You didn't kill her, she was already dead," said the dwarf calmly. "And
you can't kill me, for I'm immortal. But you try very hard at life, and
so I will tell you this. I am the guardian of the book, and I was
brought to this dreaded, forsaken land to watch over the book's history,
to keep it from getting back to where it comes from. I am not good, I am
not bad; but I am locked here, condemned to a deathless life to guard
the book. I don't care what happens to you or anyone else, but I protect
the book: that is my charge."

"The book?" She was struggling to understand; she felt drunker the more
she heard.

"What you call the Grimmerie. It has other names-no matter."

"Then why don't you take it, why don't you have it?"

"I don't work like that. I am the silent partner. I work through events,
I live on the sidelines, I dabble in causes and effects, I watch how the
misbegotten creatures of this world live their lives. I interfere only
to keep the book safe. To some extent I can see what's coming, and to
that extent I meddle in the affairs of men and beasts." He jigged like a
little fiend. "You see me here, you see me there. Having second sight is
a great advantage in the security business."

"You work with Yackle."

"We sometimes have the same intentions, and we sometimes do not. Her
interest seems to be different from mine."

"Who is she? What is her interest? 'Why do you hover at the edges of my
life?"

"In the world I come from, there are guardian angels," said the dwarf,
"but so far as I can work it out, she is an opposite number, and her
concern is you."

"Why do I deserve such a fiend? Why is my life so plagued? Who
positioned her to influence my life?"

"There are things I don't know, and things I do," said the dwarf. "Who
Yacide answers to, if anyone, if anything, is beyond my realm of
knowledge or interest. But why you? You must know this. For you"-the

dwarf spoke in a bright, offhand tone-"are neither this nor that-or
shall I say both this and that? Both of Oz and of the other world. Your
old Frex always was wrong; you were never a punishment for his crimes.
You are a half-breed, you are a new breed, you are a grafted limb, you
are a dangerous anomaly. Always you were drawn to the composite
creatures, the broken and reassembled, for that is what you are. Can you
be so dull that you have not figured this out?"

"Show me something," she said. "I do not know what you mean. Show me
something the world hasn't shown me yet."

"For you, a pleasure." He disappeared, and there was the sound of
mechanical parts being wound up, moving against one another, the grind
of lubricated gears, the slap of leather belts, the chuck-chuck of
pendulums swinging. "A private audience with the Time Dragon itself."

At the top, a beast prowled, flexing its wings in a dance of gestures,
both bidding welcome and holding at bay. The Witch stared.

A small area halfway up was illuminated. "A three-act play," came the
voice of the dwarf, from deep within. "Act One: The Birth of Holiness."

Later she could not have said how she knew what it was, but what she
saw, in an abbreviated pantomime, was the life of Saint Aelphaba. The
good woman, the mystic and recluse, who disappeared to pray behind a
waterfall. The Witch flinched to see the saint walk straight through the
waterfall (a guttering spout overhead drained real water out into a
hidden tray below). She waited for the tiktok saint to come out, but she
didn't come, and eventually the lights went out.

"Act Two: The Birth of Evil."

"Wait, the Saint didn't emerge as the tales say she did," said the
Witch. "I want my money's worth or not at all, please."

"Act Two: The Birth of Evil."

lights came up on another little stage. There was a credible lIkeness of
Coiwen Grounds painted on a cardboard backdrop beyond. A figurine who
was Melena kissed her parents good-bye and went off with Frex, a
handsome little puppet with a short black beard and a jaunty step. They
stopped in a small hut, and Frex kissed her and continued on to preach.
All through the rest of the scene he was off to one side, yammering away
to some peasants who were busy screwing each other on the ground before
him, hacking each other to pieces arid eating theIr sexual parts, which
ran with a real gravy; you

could smell the garlic and sauteed mushrooms. Melena, at home, yawned
and waited, and teased her pretty hair. Along came a man whom the Witch
could not Identify at first. He had a small black bag and from it he
extracted a green glass bottle. He gave it to Melena to drink, and when
she had, she fell into his arms, either stupefied and drunk as the Witch
was tonight, or liberated. It wasn't clear. The traveler and Melena made
love in the same bouncy rhythm as Frex's parishioners. Frex started to
dance to the rhythm himself. Then, when the act of love was done, the
traveler pulled himself off Melena. He snapped his fingers, and a
balloon with a basket beneath descended from the fly space above. The
traveler got in. It was the Wizard.

"Oh, nonsense," said the Witch. "This is pure poppycock."

The lights dimmed. The voice of the dwarf sounded from inside the
contraption. "Act Three," he said. "The Marriage of the Sacred and the
Wicked."

She waited, but no area was illuminated, no puppet moved.

"Well?" she said.

"Well what?" he answered.

"Where's the end of the play?"

He stuck his head out of a trap door and winked at her. "Who said the
end was written yet?" he answered, and slammed the door shut. Another
door opened, just by the Witch's hand, and a tray slid out. Lying on it
was an oval looking glass, cracked along one side, scratched on its
surfaces. It looked like the glass she had had since childhood, the one
she used to imagine she could see the Other Land in, back when she
believed in such a thing. The last she remembered of the oval glass was
in her hideaway digs in the Emerald City. Inside the glass lived
reflections of a young and beautiful Fiyero, and a young and impassioned
Fae. The Witch took the mirror and hid it in her apron, and wandered away.


There was nothing in the morning papers about the death of Madame
Morrible. The Witch, with a treacherous headache, decided that she could
wait no longer. Either Avaric and his beastly companions would spread
the rumors, or they wouldn't There was nothing left to be done.

Just let word get to the Wizard, though, said the Witch to herself. I
would like to be a fly on the wall of his bunker when that happens. Let
him think I killed her. Let that be how the news goes.


9
______
She returned to Munchkinland in a punishing journey, exhausting herself.
She had slept so little, and her head still throbbed. But she was proud
of herself. She arrived in the front yard of Boq's cottage, and called
for the family to come.

Boq was out in the field, and one of his children had to be dispatched
to fetch hIm. When he came running, he had an adze in one hand. "I
wasn't expecting you, it took me a minute," he said, panting.

"You'd have run quicker if you'd left your blade behind," she noted.

But he didn't drop it. "Elphie, why have you come back?"

"To tell you what I have done," she said. "I thought you would like to
know. I have killed Madame Morrible, and she can no longer harm anyone."

But Boq did not look pleased. "You took against that old woman?" he
said. "Surely she was beyond the point of hurting anyone now?"

"You've made the mistake that everyone makes," said the Witch, cruelly
disappointed. "Don't you know there is no such point?"

"You had worked to protect the Animals," said Boq. "But you did not
intend to sink to the level of those who brutalized them."

"I have fought fire with fire," said the Witch, "and I ought to have
done it sooner! Boq, you've become an equivocating fool."

"Children," said Boq, "run inside and find your mother."

He was scared of her.

"You're sitting on the fence," she said. "Here your precious
Munchkinland is going to be sucked back into the folds of Royal Oz,
under His Highness the Emperor Wizard. And you see what Glinda is up to,
and you send that child on her way with the shoes that belong to me. You
took a stand when you were young, Boq! How can you have-spoiled so!"

"Elphie," said Boq, "look at me. You are beside yourself. Have you been
drinking? Dorothy is just a child. You may not retell this to make her
into some sort of fiend!"

Milla, alerted to the tension in the front yard, came out and stood
behind Boq. She carried a kitchen knife. Whispering noisily, the
children watched from the window.

"You do not need to defend yourselves with knives and adzes," said the
Witch coldly. "I had thought you would care to know about Madame Morrible."

"You are shaking," said Boq. "Look, I will put down this thing. Clearly
you are upset. Nessa's death has been hard on you. But you must get
control of yourself, Elphie. Don't take against Dorothy. She is an
innocent creature. She's all alone. I beg of you."

"Oh, don't beg, don't beg," said the Witch, "I could not abide begging,
from you, of all people!" She ground her teeth and clenched her fists.
"I will promise you nothing, Boq!"

And this time she got on her broom and flew away. Recklessly, she
mounted the sides of air currents, until the ground below had lost any
detail sharp enough to cause her pain.


She was beginning to feel too long away from Kiamo Ko. Liir was an
idiot, headstrong and lily-livered by turns, and Nanny sometimes forgot
where she was. The Witch didn't want to think about yesterday, the death
of Madame Mornble, the accusations made by the puppet play. She could
hardly be more averse to the Wizard than she already was; if there was a
shred of possibility to that sick idea of his having fathered her, it
only made her hate him the more. She would ask Nanny about it when she
got home.

When she got home. She was thirty-eight, and just realizing what it felt
like to have a sense of home. For that, Sarima, thank you, she thought.
Maybe the definition of home is the place where you are never forgiven,
so you may always belong there, bound by guilt. And maybe the cost of
belonging is worth it.

But she decided to head toward Kiamo Ko by following the Yellow Brick
Road. She would make one last try for the shoes. She had nothing left to
lose. If the shoes fell into the hands of the Wizard, he would use them
to bolster his claim to Munchkinland. Maybe, if she tried, she could
shrug her shoulders and leave Munchkinland to its own fate-but damn it,
the shoes were hers.


She finally found a peddler who had seen Dorothy. He stopped by the side
of his wagon and rubbed the ears of his donkey as he discussed it with
her. "She passed here a few hours ago," he said, chewing on a carrot

and sharing it with the donkey. "No, she wasn't alone. She had a
ragamuffin crew of friends with her. Bodyguards, I suspect."

"Oh, the poor frightened thing," said the Witch. "Who? Munchkinlander
beefcake boys, I wonder?"

"Not exactly," said the peddler. "There was a straw man, and a tin
woodman, and a big cat who hid In the bushes when I passed-a leopard
maybe, or a cougar."

"A man of straw?" said the Witch. "She's awakening the figures of myth,
she's charming them to life? This must be some attractive child. Did you
notice her shoes?"

"I wanted to buy them from her."

"Yes! Yes, did you?"

"Not for sale. She seemed very attached to them. They were given her by
a Good Witch."

"Pigspittle, they were."

"None of my affair either way," said the peddler. "Can I interest you in
anything?"

"An umbrella," said the Witch. "I've come out without one, and it looks
nasty."

"I remember the good old days of the drought," said the peddler, fishing
out a somewhat worn umbrella. "Ah, here's the bumbershoot. Yours for a
nickel form."

"Mine for free," said the Witch. "You wouldn't deny a poor old woman in
need, would you, my friend?"

"Not and live to tell about it, I see," he answered, and went on his way
uncompensated.

But as the wagon passed, the Witch heard another voice: "Of course, no
one asks a beast of burden, but it's my opinion she's Ozma come out of
the deep sleep chamber, and marching on Oz to restore herself to the
throne."

"I hate royalists," said the peddler, and lashed out with a crop. "I
hate Animals with attitude." But the Witch could not stop to intervene.
So far she had been unable to save Nor, she had been incompetent at
bargaining with the Wizard. She had been a moment too late to murder
Madame Morrible-or had she been just in time? Either way, she should not
try what was clearly beyond her.


10
______
The Witch trembled on the lip of an updraft. She had brought the broom
higher than ever before; she was in a state of exhilaration and panic.
Should she pursue Dorothy, should she snatch those shoes away-and what
were her real motives? Was it to keep them out of the hands of the
Wizard, just as Glinda had wanted them out of the hands of power-hungry
Munchkinlanders? Or was it to snatch back some small shred of Frex's
attention, whether she had ever deserved it or not?

Beneath the broom, clouds began to gauze the view of rock-freckled hills
and patchwork meadows of melon and corn. The thin twists of vapor looked
like the marks of erasure made by a schoolchild's rubber, streaking
whitely along a watercolor sketch of a landscape. What if she should
just keep on, urging the broom higher, yanking it up? Would it splinter
as it beat itself against the heavens?

She could give up these efforts. She could forsake Nor. She could
release Liir. She could abandon Nanny. She could surrender Dorothy. She
could give up the shoes.

But a wind came up, a shoulder of hard air leaning onto her left side.
She could not force the broom against it. She was driven sideways, and
down, until the Yellow Brick Road once again etched a golden thread
between forests and fields. There was a storm on the horizon, slotting
bars of brownish rain between lavender-gray clouds and gray-green
fields. She hadn't much time.

Then she thought she caught sight of them below, and dove down to see.
Were they stopping to rest beneath a black willow tree? If so, she could
finish things up now.


11
______
By the time the storm lifted-and the Witch awoke from what she now
identified as a horrible hangover-she wasn't sure it was the same day.
She wasn't even sure she had gotten near them-could she have let them
slip through her fingers like that? But whatever the case, delusion or
foggy memory, the Witch didn't dare follow them into the

379

Emerald City. Madame Morrible had many friends in this rotten regime,
and the news would have gotten through by now. There might even be
search parties out for the Witch. So be it.

Though it galled her, for the time being she had to give up on the idea
of reclaiming Nessa's shoes. She scarcely rested during the entire trip
back to Kiamo Ko, except to stop and pick some berries, and nibble some
nuts and sweet roots, to keep her strength up.

The castle had not been burned down. The Wizard's reconnaissance army
was still camped at its outpost near Red Windmill in a state of bored
readiness. Nanny was busy crocheting a pretty casket cover for her own
funeral, and making guest lists. Most of the guests were already in the
Other Land, presuming that for Nanny there was an Other Land. "How nice
it would be to see Ama Clutch again, I quite agree," shouted the Witch,
giving Nanny's shoulders a squeeze. "I always liked her. She had more
character than that simpering Glinda."

"You were devoted to Glinda, you were," said Nanny. "Everyone knew it."

"Well, no more," said the Witch. "The traitor."

"You smell of blood, go wash up," said Nanny. "Is it your time?"

"I never wash, you know that. Where's Liir?"

"Who?"

"Liir."

"Oh, around somewhere." She smiled. "Look in the fishwell!"

By now an old family joke.

"What new nonsense is this?" said the Witch, finding Liir in the music room.

"They were right all along," he said. "Look what I finally caught, after
all these years."

It was the golden carp that had long haunted the fishwell. "Oh, I admit
that it was dead and I brought it up with the bucket, not a hook or a
net. But even so. Do you think we'll ever be able to tell them we
finally caught it?"

All these last months he had begun to talk about Sarima and the family
as if they were ghosts, hiding just around the curve of the spiral
staircase in the tower, suppressing giggles at this long, long game of
hide-and-seek.

"We can only hope so," she said. She wondered, faintly, if it was

immoral to raise children in the habit of hope. Was it not, in the end,
all the harder for them to adjust to the reality of how the world
worked? "Everything else was all right while I was gone?"

"Just fine," he said. "But I'm glad you're back."

She grunted, and went to greet Chistery and the chattering kin.


In her room she hung the old glass with a cord and a nail, and kept from
looking at it. She had the horrible feeling that she would see Dorothy,
and she didn't want to see her again. The child reminded her of someone.
It was that unquestioning directness, that gaze unblinkered by shame.
She was as natural as a raccoon-or a fern-or a comet. The Witch thought:

Is it Nor? Is it that Dorothy reminds me of how Nor was at this age?

But back then the Witch had not cared for Nor, not really, even though
her face had been a small, velvet reworking of Fiyero's. Except for
Nessarose, and Shell, the Witch had never warmed to the glowing promise
of children. She had always felt more alone in this regard than in her
color.

No-and now her glance did fall on the tired old looking glass, despite
her intentions. She thought: the Witch with her mirror. Who do we ever
see but ourselves, and that's the curse-Dorothy reminds me of myself, at
that age, whatever it is . -


The time in Ovvels. There is the green girl, shy, gawky, and humiliated.
To avoid the pain of damp feet, splashing around in clammy leggings made
of swampcalf hide and waterproof boots. Mama, pregnant with Shell, huge
as a barge. Mama praying nonstop for months that she might at last bring
a healthy child into the world. Mama dumping the bottles of liquor and
the pinlobble leaves into the mud.

Nanny tends to little Nessa, papoosing her around in the daily hunt for
charfish, needle flowers, and broad bean vines. Nessa can see but she
cannot touch: what a curse for a child! (No wonder she believed in
things she couldn't see-nothing is provable by touch.) For his
atonement, Papa takes the green girl with him on an expedition to the
relatives of Turtle Heart, a many-branched family living in a nest of
huts and walkways suspended in a grove of broad, rotting suppletrees.
The Quadlings, who are more comfortable on their haunches, duck their
heads. The smell of raw fish in their homes, on their skin. They are
frightened of the unionist

minister, finding them out in their squalid hamlet. I have no firm
memory of individuals, but for one old matriarch, toothless and proud.

The Quadlings come up, after a period of shyness, not to the minister
but to me, the green girl. She is no longer I, she is too long ago, she
is only she, impenetrably mysterious and dense-she stands as Dorothy
stood, some inborn courage making her spine straight, her eyes
unblinking. Her shoulders back, her hands at her side. Submissive to the
stroke of their fingers on her face. Unffinching in the cause of
missionary work.

Papa asks forgiveness for the death of Turtle Heart, maybe some five
years earlier. He says it is his fault. He and his wife had both fallen
in love with the Quadling glassblower. What can I give you to make up
for it, he says. Elphaba the girl thinks he is mad, she thinks they are
not listening, they are mesmerized by her weirdness. Please forgive me,
he says.

The matriarch alone responds to these words; maybe she is the only one
who actually remembers Turtle Heart. She has a look of someone caught
venturing out from beneath a rock. Well, in a people whose moral code is
so lax, so little is wrong. For her this encounter is a mysterious,
complicated transaction.

She says something like, We don't shrive, we don't shrive, and not for
Turtle Heart, no, and she strikes Papa on the face with a reed, cutting
him with thin stripes. I was only a witness, I was not really alive
then, but I saw:

This was when Papa began to lose his way, it dates from this whipping.

I see him shocked: It doesn't occur in his conception of moral life that
some sins are unforgivable. He blanches, onion white behind the
blood-pearled perforations of her attack. Maybe she has every right to
do what she's done, but in Papa's life she's become old Kumbricia.

I see her, willful, proud: Her moral system doesn't allow for
forgiveness, and she is just as incarcerated as he, but she doesn't know
it. She grins, all gums and menace, and rests the reed on her
collarbone, where its fetching tip falls like a necklace around her own
neck.

He points to me, and says-not to me, but to them all-Isn't this
punishment enough?

Elphaba the girl does not know how to see her father as a broken man.
All she knows is that he passes his brokenness on to her. Daily his
habits of loathing and self-loathing cripple her. Daily she loves him
back because she knows no other way.

I see myself there: the girl witness, wide-eyed as Dorothy. Staring at a
world too horrible to comprehend, believing-by dint of ignorance and
innocence-that beneath this unbreakable contract of guilt and blame
there is always an older contract that may bind and release in a more
salutary way. A more ancient precedent of ransom, that we may not always
be tormented by our shame. Neither Dorothy nor young Elphaba can speak
of this, but the belief of it is in both our faces -


The Witch had taken the green glass bottle, whose label still read
MIRACLE ELI-, and placed it on her bedside table. She took a spoonful of
the ancient elixir before sleeping, hoping for miracles, seeking some
version of the fabulous alibi Dorothy was unwinding, that she had come
from a country somehow other-not the real states across the desert, but
a whole separate geophysical existence. Even metaphysical. The Wizard
made such a claim for himself, and if the dwarf was right, the Witch had
this ancestry too. At night she tried to train herself to look on the
periphery of her dreams, to note the details. It was a little like
trying to see around the edges of a mirror, but, she found, more rewarding.

But what did she get? Everything ffickered, like a guttering candle but
more harshly, more stridently. People moved in short, jerky motions.
They were colorless, they were vapid, they were drugged, they were
manic. Buildings were high and cruel. Winds were strong. The Wizard
stepped in and out of these pictures, a very humble-looking man in this
context. In one window, in a shop from which the Wizard was emerging
rather dejectedly, she thought, she caught some words once, and willed
herself with tremendous effort to wake up so she could write them down.
But they didn't make any sense to her. NO IRISH NEED APPLY.

Then one night she had a nightmare. Again the Wizard began it. He walked
over some hills of sand, with tall gray grasses blowing in a fierce
gale-a thousand thousand grasses like the scratchy sedge with which the
old Quadling matriarch had struck Frex-and the Wizard stopped along a
broad flat stretch. He stepped out of his clothes, and looked at a
timepiece in his hands, as if memorizing an historic instant. Then he
walked forward, naked and broken. When the Witch realized what he was
approaching, she tried to back out of the dream with a howl, but could
not manage to disengage herself. This was the mythical ocean,

and the Wizard walked into water up to his knees, his thighs, his waist;
he paused and shivered, and slopped water over the rest of himself as a
kind of penance. Then he kept walking, and disappeared entirely into the
sea, as Saint Aelphaba of the Waterfall had disappeared behind her
watery veil. The sea rocked like an earthquake, vomiting against the
sandy shore, pounding in a kettledrum commotion. There was no Other Side
to it. It threw the Wizard back, again and again, though again and again
he forged in, more and more exhausted. The stoicism, the determination:
no wonder he had managed to overcome a nation. The dream ended with him
washed back on shore one last time, weeping with frustration.

She woke, gagging, terrified beyond telling, salt in her nostrils.
Thereafter she avoided the miracle elixir. Instead, she concocted a
potion derived both from Nanny's recipe book and the Grimmerie's
marginalia, on how to keep awake. If she fell asleep again, she would be
prey to that vision of earthly destruction, and she would rather die.

Nanny didn't have very much to say about nightmares. "Your mother had
them too," she remarked at last. "She used to say she saw the unknown
city of anger in her dreams. She was so enraged over how you turned out,
you know-I mean physically, dear, don't look like that at me: a green
girl isn't easy for any mother to explain away-that she gulped down
those pills like candy when Nessarose was expected. If Nessarose were
still around to take up a grudge, she could blame you, in a way, for
what happened to her."

"But where did you get that green bottle?" said the Witch into Nanny's
good ear. "Look at it, Nanny dear, and try to remember."

"I suspect I bought it at a jumble sale," she said. "I could stretch a
penny, believe me."

You could stretch the truth even further, thought the Witch. She
suppressed a desire to smash the green glass. How deeply bound by cords
of family anger we all are, thought the Witch. None of us breaks free.


12
______
One afternoon a few weeks later, Liir came back from a ramble all hot
and bothered. The Witch hated to hear that he had been hobnobbing again
with the Wizard's soldiers down in Red Windmill.

"They had news, a dispatch from the Emerald City," he said. "A

delegation of strangers got in to see the Wizard. And just a girl!
Dorothy, they said, a girl from the Other Land. And some friends. The
Wizard hasn't allowed an audience with his subjects in years-he works
through ministers, they say. A lot of soldiers think he died long ago,
and it's a Palace plot to safeguard the peace. But Dorothy and her
friends got in, and they saw him, and told everyone what it was like!"

"Well well," said the Witch. "Imagine that. All of Oz, Loyal and
Otherwise, is yapping about this Dorothy. What did the fools say next?"

"The dispatch soldier said that the guests asked the Wizard to grant
them some wishes. The Scarecrow asked for a brain, Nick Chopper the Tin
Woodman asked for a heart, and the Cowardly lion asked for courage."

"And I suppose Dorothy asked for a shoe horn?"

"Dorothy asked to be sent home."

"I hope she gets her wish. And?"

But Liir got coy.

"Oh come on, I'm too old to be put off my supper by gossip," she snapped.

Liir looked flushed with guilty pleasure. "The soldiers said that the
Wizard had rejected the odd requests."

"And you're so very surprised?"

"The Wizard told Dorothy that he would grant them their wishes-when they
had-when they had-"

"You haven't stuttered in years. Don't start again, or I'll beat you."

"Dorothy and his friends have to come here and kill you," he finished.
"The soldiers said it's because you murdered an old lady in Shiz, a
famous old lady, and you're an assassin. Also you're crazy, they said."

"I'm a more likely murderer than those incompetent vagabonds could be,"
she said. "He was just trying to get rid of them. Probably he's
instructed his own Gale Forcers to slit the girl's throat as soon as
she's safely out of the limelight." And no doubt the Wizard had
confiscated the shoes. It galled her. But how flattered she felt that
the news of her attack had gotten out. By now she was sure she had
killed Madame Morrible. It only made sense that she had.

But Liir shook his head. "The funny thing," he said, "is that Dorothy is
called Dorothy Gale. The soldiers at Red Windmill said the Gale Forcers
wouldn't touch her, they're too superstitious."

"What do these soldiers know of intrigue, stationed here out at the edge
of the moon?"

Liir shrugged. "Aren't you impressed that the Wizard of Oz even knows
who you are? Are you a murderer?"

"Oh Liir, you'll understand when you're older. Or anyway not
understanding will become second nature, and it won't matter. I wouldn't
harm you, if that's what you mean. But you sound so surprised that I
should be known in the Emerald City. Just because you disobey me and
treat me like refuse, do you think the whole world does?" Yet she was
pleased. "But you know, Liir, if there's even the slightest chance that
there's any truth to these rumors, you had better stay away from Red
Windmill for a while. They might kidnap you and hold you for ransom
until I give myself up to this schoolgirl and her needy companions."

"I want to meet Dorothy," he said.

"You're not that age already, please preserve us," she said. "I always
intended to pickle you before you got to puberty."

"Well, I'm not getting kidnapped, so don't worry," he said. "Besides, I
want to be here when they get here."

"Worry is the last thing I'd do if you got kidnapped," she answered.
"It'd be your own damn fault, and a great relief to me to have one less
mouth to feed."

"Oh well, then who'd carry the firewood up all those stairs every winter?"

"I'll hire that Nick Chopper fellow. His axe looks pretty sharp to me."

"You've seen him?" Liir's mouth dropped open. "No, you haven't!"

"I have, as a matter of fact," she said. "Who says I don't travel in the
best circles?"

"What's she like?" he said, his face eager and bright. "You must have
seen Dorothy too. What's she like, Auntie Witch?"

"Don't you Auntie me, you know that makes me sick."

He pestered without stopping until finally she had to screech at him.
"She's a beautiful little dolt who believes everything everybody says to
her! And if she gets here and you tell her you love her, she'll probably
believe you! Now get out of here, I have work to do!"

He lingered at the door, and said, "The lion wants courage, the Tin

Man a heart, and the Scarecrow brains. Dorothy wants to go home. What do
you want?"

"A little peace and quiet."

"No, really."

She couldn't say forgiveness, not to Liir. She started to say "a
soldier," to make fun of his mooning affections over the guys in
uniform. But realizing even as she said it that he would be hurt, she
caught herself halfway, and in the end what came out of her mouth
surprised them both. She said, "A soul-"

He blinked at her.

"And you?" she said in a quieter voice. "What do you want Liir, if the
Wizard could give you anything?"

"A father," he answered.


13
______
She wondered, briefly, if she was going insane. That night she sat up in
a chair and thought about what she had said.

A person who doesn't believe in the Unnamed God, or anything else, can't
believe in a soul.

If you could take the skewers of religion, those that riddle your frame,
make you aware every time you move-if you could withdraw the scimitars
of religion from your mental and moral systems-could you even stand? Or
do you need religion as, say, the hippos in the Grasslands need the
poisonous little parasites within them, to help them digest fiber and
pulp? The history of peoples who have shucked off religion isn't an
especially persuasive argument for living without it. Is religion
itself- that tired and ironic phrase-the necessary evil?

The idea of religion worked for Nessarose, it worked for Frex. There may
be no real city in the clouds, but dreaming of it can enliven the spirit.

Perhaps in our age's generous attempt at unionism, allowing all
devotional urges life and breath under the canopy of the Unnamed God,
perhaps we have sealed our own doom. Perhaps it's time to name the
Unnamed God, even feebly and in our own wicked image, that we may at
least survive under the illusion of an authority that could care for us.

For whittle away from the Unnamed God anything approximating

character, and what have you got? A big hollow wind. And wind may have
gale force but it may not have moral force; and a voice in a whirl' wind
is a carnival barker's trick.

More appealing-she now saw, for once-the old-timers' notions of
paganism. Lurlina in her fairy chariot, hovering just out of sight in
the clouds, ready to swoop down some millennium or other and remember
who we are. The Unnamed God, by virtue of its anonymity, can't ever be
suspected of a surprise visit.

And would we recognize the Unnamed God if it knocked on our doors?


14
______
Sometimes she napped, against her will, her chin sagging on her chest,
sometimes driving right down to the tabletop, jarring her teeth and

rattling her jaw, and startling herself awake.

She had taken to standing at the window, looking down in the valley. It
would be weeks before Dorothy and her band arrived, if indeed they
hadn't already been murdered and their corpses burned, just as Sarima's
must have been.

One night LIir came back from a visit to the barracks. He was teary and
inarticulate, and she tried not to care about it, but was too curious to
let it go. Finally he told her. One of the soldiers had proposed to his
fellows that when Dorothy and friends arrive, the friends be killed and
Dorothy be tied up for a little amusement among the lonely, randy men.

"Oh, men will have their fantasies," said the Witch, but she was troubled.

What had made Liir cry was that his friends had reported the soldier's
remarks to their superior. The soldier had been stripped and castrated,
and nailed to the windmill. His body rotated in circles as the vultures
came and tried to peck at his entrails. He still wasn't even dead.

"It isn't hard to find evil in this world," said the Witch. "Evil is
always more easily imagined than good, somehow." But she was struck at
the vehemence of the Commander's response against one of his own. So
Dorothy might well be alive still, and was apparently under orders of
protection from the highest military offices in the land.

Liir held Chistery in his lap and sobbed onto his scalp. Chistery said,
"Well, we'll wail while woe'll wheel," and he cried along with Liir.

"Aren't they the sweet pair," observed Nanny. "Wouldn't that make the
sweetest painting?"

Under cover of darkness the Witch slipped away on her broom, and saw to
it that the suffering soldier died at once.


She thought one afternoon, inexplicably, of the baby lion cub taken from
its mother, and pressed into service in Doctor Nikidik's lab back in
Shiz. She remembered how it had cowered, she remembered the fuss she had
made about it. Or was she only glorifying herself in hindsight?

If it was the same lion, grown up timid and unnatural, it should have no
bone to pick with her. She had saved it when it was young. Hadn't she?

They confused her, this band of Yellow Brick Road Irregulars. The Tin
Woodman was hollow, a tiktok cipher, or an eviscerated human under a
spell. The lion was a perversion of its own natural instincts. She could
deal with tiktok clockworks, she could handle Animals. But it was the
Scarecrow she feared. Was it a spell? Was it a mask? Was there merely
some clever dancer inside? All three of them were emasculated in some
way or other, deluded under the spell of the girl's innocence.

She could give the Lion a history, and think of him as that abused cub
in a ShIz science hall. She suspected that Nick Chopper was the victim
of her own sister's spite and magic, casualty of the enchanted axe. But
she had no way to place the Scarecrow.

She began to think that behind that painted cornmeal sack of a face,
there was a face she would know, a face she had been waiting for.

She lit a candle and said the words aloud, as if she really could do
spells. The words blew aside the taper of grayish smoke that rose from
the fatty tallow. If they had any other effect in the world than that,
she didn't know it yet. "Fiyero didn't die," she said. "He was
imprisoned, and he has escaped. He is coming home to Kiamo Ko, he is
coming home to me, and he is disguised as a scarecrow because he doesn't
yet know what he will find."

It would take brains to think up such a plan.

She took an old tunic of Fiyero's. She called elderly Killyjoy and bade
him sniff it well, and sent him down into the valley every day, so

that if the travelers showed up, Killyjoy would be able to find them,
and lead them home rejoicing.

And though she tried not to sleep, on occasion she could not help it;
her dreams brought Fiyero closer and closer to home.


15
______
There was a day, in the first gusts of autumn, that the banners and
standards of the camp below were shifted and bugles blew tinnily up

the slopes to the castle. By this the Witch guessed that the troupe had
arrived in Red Windmill, and were being given a royal welcome. "They've
come so far, they won't wait now," she said. "Go, KiHyjoy, go find them
and show them the quickest way here."

She loosed the senior dog, and so strong were his exhortations that the
entire pack of his kin went racing along with him, howling with joy and
frantic to do their duty.

"Nanny," cried the Witch, "put on a clean petticoat and change your
apron, we'll have company by nightfall!"

But the dogs didn't come back, all afternoon and into the gloaming, and
the Witch could see why. With a telescopic eye in a cylindrical
casing-invented by the Witch along the lines of Doctor Dillamond's
discovery about opposing lenses-she followed a shock of carnage. Dorothy
and the Lion trembled with the Scarecrow beyond while the 'Tin Woodman
struck the heads of her beasts one after the other with his axe.
Killyjoy and his wolfy relations lay scattered like dead soldiers on a
field of retreat.

The Witch danced with rage, and summoned Liir. "Your dog is dead, look
what they did!" she cried. "Look and make sure that I didn't only
imagine it!"

"Well, I didn't like that dog very much anymore," said Liir. "He had a
good long life, anyway." He concurred, tremblingly, but then trained the
glass on the slope again.

"You fool, that Dorothy is not for messing with!" she cried, slapping
the instrument out of his hand.

"You're awfully on edge for someone about to have company," he said
sullenly.

"They are supposed to be coming to kill me, if you remember," she said,
although she had forgotten that, as she had forgotten her desire for the
shoes until she saw them again in the glass. The Wizard had not demanded
them of Dorothy! Why not? What fresh campaign of intrigue was this?

She wheeled about her room, whipping pages of the Grimmerie back and
forth. She recited a spell, did it wrong, did it again, and then turned
and tried to apply it to the crows. Though the original three crows had
long since fallen stiffly from the top of the door frame, there were
plenty of others in residence still, rather inbred and silly, but
suggestible in a stupid, moblike way.

"Go," she said. "Look with your eyes more closely than I can, pull the
mask off the Scarecrow so we can know who he is. Get them for me. Peck
out the eyes of Dorothy and the Lion. And three of you, go on ahead to
the old Princess Nastoya, out there in the Thousand Year Grasslands, for
the time is coming when we will be reunited, all of us. With the help of
the Grimmerie, the Wizard may topple at last!"

"I never know what you're talking about anymore," said Liir. "You can't
blind them!"

"Oh, watch me," snarled the Witch. The crows blew away in a black cloud
and dropped like buckshot through the sky, down the jagged precipices,
until they came to the travelers.

"A pretty sunset, is there?" said Nanny, coming up to the Witch's room
in one of her rare forays, Chistery as always providing service.

"She's sent the crows out to blind the guests coming for dinner!"

"What?"

"She's BLINDING THE GUESTS COMING FOR DINNER!"

"Well, that's one way to avoid having to dust, I suppose."

"Will you lunatics hush up?" The Witch was twitching as if with a
nervous disorder; her elbows flapped, as if she were a crow herself. She
gave out a long howl when she found them in the glass.

"What, what, let me see," said Liir, grabbing the thing. He explained to
Nanny, because the Witch was almost beyond speech by now. "Well, I guess
the Scarecrow knows how to scare crows, all right."

"Why, what's he done?"

"They're not coming back, that's all I'll say," said Liir, glancing at
the Witch.

"It still could be him," she said at last, breathing heavily. "You might
get your wish yet, Liir."

"My wish?" He didn't remember asking for a father, and she didn't bother
to remind him. Nothing had yet suggested to her that the Scarecrow
wasn't a man in disguise. She would not need forgiveness if Fiyero had
not died!

The light was failing, and the odd band of friends was making good time
up the hill. They had come without an escort of soldiers, perhaps
because the soldiers really believed that Kiamo Ko was run by a Wicked
Witch.

"Come on, bees," said the Witch, "work with me now. All together on this
one, honeys. We need a little sting, we need a little zip, we want a
little nasty, can you give us a little jab? No, not us, listen when I
talk to you, you simpletons! The girl on the hill below. She's after
your Queen Bee! And when you're through with your job, I'll go down and
collect those shoes."

"What's that old hag blathering about now?" said Nanny to Liir.

The bees were alert to the pitch in the Witch's voice, and they rose to
swarm out the window.

"You watch, I can't look," said the Witch.

"The moon is just like a pretty peach rising over the mountains," said
Nanny with the telescope to her old cataracted eye. "Why don't we put in
some peach trees instead of all those infernal apples in the back?"

"The bees, Nanny. Liir, take that from her and tell me what happens."

Liir gave a blow-by-blow recounting. "They're swooping down, they look
like a genie or something, all flying in a big clump with a straggly
tail. The travelers see them coming. Yes! Yes! The Scarecrow is taking
straw out of his chest and leggings, and covering the Lion and Dorothy,
and there's a little dog, too. So the bees can't get through the straw,
and the Scarecrow is all in pieces on the ground."

It couldn't be. The Witch grabbed the eyepiece. "Liir, you are a filthy
liar," she shouted. Her heart roared like a wind.

But it was true. There was nothing but straw and air inside the
Scarecrow's clothes. No hidden lover returning, no last hope of salvation.

And the bees, having none left to attack but the TIn Woodman, flung
themselves against him, and dropped in black heaps on the ground,

like charred shadows, their stingers blunted on his fenders.

"You've got to give our guests credit for ingenuity," said Liir.

"Will you shut up before I tie your tongue in a knot?" said the Witch.

"I suppose I should start down and get some hors d'oeuvres going,
they'll be peckish after these ordeals you're setting them," said Nanny.
"Have you an opinion as to cheese and crackers or fresh vegetables with
pepper sauce?"

"I say cheese," said Liir.

"Elphaba? What's your opinion?"

But she was too busy doing research in the Grimmerie. "It's up to me, as
always was the case," said Nanny. "I get to do all the work. I'm
supposed to be teary with joy, at my age. You'd think I could rest my
feet for once, but no. Always the bridesmaid, never the bride."

"Always the godfather, never the god," said Liir.

"Will you two please have mercy on me! Now go on, Nanny, if you're
going!" Nanny headed out the door as fast as her old limbs could take
her. The Witch said, "Chistery, let her go under her own steam, I need
you here."

"Sure, let me tumble to my death, delighted to be of service," said
Nanny. "It's going to be cheese, for that."

The Witch explained to Chistery what she wanted. "This is foolish. It'll
be dark before long, and they'll tumble over some cliff and die. The
poor dears, I'd rather not. I mean the Tin Woodman and the Scarecrow,
they can tumble all they want, and not be much hurt, I imagine. A good
tinsmith could repair a battered torso. But bring me Dorothy and the
Lion. Dorothy has my shoes, and I have a rendezvous with the Lion. We're
old friends. Can you do this?"

Chistery squinted, nodded, shook his head, shrugged, spat.

"Well try, what good are you if you don't try," she said. "Off with you,
and your cronies with you."

She turned to Liir. "There, are you satisfied? I haven't asked them to
be killed. They're being escorted here as our guests. I'll get the shoes
and let them go on their way. And then I'll walk this Grimmerie into the
mountains and live in a cave. You're old enough to take care of
yourself. Good riddance to bad rubbish. Who needs forgiveness now? Well?"

"They're coming to kill you," he said.

"Yes, and aren't you just breathless with anticipation for that!"

"I'll protect you," he said, uneasily, and then added, "but not to the
extent of harming Dorothy."

"Oh, go set the table, and tell Nanny to forget the cheese and crackers,
and go with the vegetables." She shook her broom at him. "Go, I tell
you, when I tell you to go!"


When she was alone, she sank in a heap. Either phenomenal luck lay with
these travelers, or they had enough courage, brains, and heart among
them to do quite well. She was taking the wrong approach, clearly. She
should welcome the child, explain the situation nicely, and get the
damned shoes while she could. With the shoes, with the help of the
Princess Nastoya, maybe there would be vengeance against the Wizard yet.
Anyway, the Grimmerie would be hidden. One way or the other. And the
shoes removed outside the Wizard's reach.

But the shock of the death of her familiars made her blood run cold
inside her. She could feel her thoughts and intentions tumbling over and
over one another. And she wasn't really sure what she would do when
face-to-face with Dorothy.


16
______
Liir and Nanny stood on either side of the doorway, smiling, when
Chistery and his companions came down with an ill-judged whump, dumping
their passengers onto the cobbles of the inner courtyard. The Lion
moaned in pain and wept from vertigo. Dorothy sat up, clutching the
small dog in her arms, and said, "And where might we be now?"

"Welcome," said Nanny, genuflecting.

"Hello," said Liir, twisting one foot around the other and falling over
into a bucket of water.

"You must be tired after your long trip," said Nanny. "Would you like to
freshen up some before we have a little light meal? Nothing fancy, you
know, we're way ofT the beaten track."

"This is Kiamo Ko," said Liir, beet red and standing up again. "The
stronghold of the Arjiki tribe."

"This is still Winkie territory?" said the girl anxiously.

"What'd she say, the little poppins, tell her to speak up," said Nanny.

"It's called the Vinkus," said Liir. "Vt/inkie is a kind of insult."

"Oh goodness, I wouldn't want to offend anyone!" she said. "Mercy, no."

"Aren't you a pretty little girl, all your arms and legs in the right
place, and such delicate sensible inoffensive skin," said Nanny, smiling.

"I'm Liir," he said, "and I live here. This is my castle."

"I'm Dorothy," she said, "and I'm very worried about my friends- the Tin
Woodman and the Scarecrow. Oh, please, can't somebody do something for
them? It's dark, and they'll be lost!"

"They can't be hurt. I'll go get them tomorrow in the daylight," said
Liir. "Promise. I'd do anything. Really, anything."

"You're so sweet, just like everyone else here," said Dorothy. "Oh,
Lion, are you all right? Was it terrible?"

"If the Unnamed God had wanted Lions to fly, he'd have given them
hot-air balloons," said the Lion. "I'm afraid I lost my lunch somewhere
over the ravine."

"Warm welcomes," Nanny chirped. "We've been expecting you. I've worn my
fingers to the bone, making a little something. It's not much, but
everything we have is yours. That's our motto here in the mountains. The
traveler is always welcome. Now let's go find some hot water and soap at
the pump, shall we, and then go in."

"You're too kind-but I need to find the Wicked Witch of the

West," Dorothy said. "I said THE WICKED WiTCH OF THE WEST.

I'm so sorry to trouble you. And it looks like a perfectly wonderful castle.

Perhaps on the way back, if my travels take me this way."

"Oh, well, she lives here, too," said hr. "With me. Don't worry, she's
here."

Dorothy looked a little pale. "She is?"

The Witch appeared at the doorway. "She is indeed, and here she is," she
said, and came down the steps at a clip, her skirts whirling, her broom
hurrying to keep up. "Well, Chistery, you did good work! I'm glad to see
all my efforts haven't been for naught. You, Dorothy, Dorothy Gale, the
one whose house had the nerve to make a crash landing on my sister!"

"Well, it wasn't my house, in a legal sense, strictly speaking," said

Dorothy, "and in fact it hardly belonged much to Auntie Em and Uncle
Henry, except for maybe a couple of windows and the chimney. I mean the
Mechanics and Farmers First State Bank of Wichita holds the mortgage, so
they're the responsible parties. I mean if you need to be in touch with
someone. They're the bank that cares," she explained.

The Witch felt suddenly, oddly calm. "It's nothing to me who owns the
house," she said. "The fact is that my sister was alive before you
arrived, and now she's dead."

"Oh, and I'm so very sorry about that," said Dorothy nervously. "Really
I am. I'd have done anything to avoid it. I know how terrible I'd feel
if a house fell on Auntie Em. Once a board in the porch roof fell on
her. She had a big bump on her head and sang hymns all afternoon, but by
evening she was her old cranky self."

Dorothy tucked her little dog under her arm and went up and took the
Witch's hands in hers. "Real!y I'm sorry," she insisted. "It's a
terrible thing to lose someone. I lost my parents when I was small, and
I remember."

"Get off me," said the Witch, "I hate false sentiment. It makes my skin
crawl."

But the girl held on, with a ragged sort of intensity, and said nothing,
just waited.

"Let go, let go," said the Witch.

"Were you close to your sister?" asked Dorothy.

"That's not the point," she snapped.

"Because I was very close to my Mama, and when she and Papa were lost at
sea, I could hardly bear it."

"Lost at sea, how do you mean," said the Witch, detaching herself from
the clinging child.

"They were on their way to visit my grandmama in the old country,
because she was dying, and a storm came up and their ship went over and
broke in half and sank to the bottom of the sea. And they drowned, every
soul onboard."

"Oh, so they had souls," said the Witch, her mind recoiling at the image
of a ship in all that water.

"And still do. That's all they have left, I suspect."

"Please will you not cling so. And come in for something to eat."

"Come on, you too," said the girl to the Lion, and it sulkily rolled
onto its big padded paws and followed along.

So now we turn into a restaurant, thought the Witch darkly. What, shall
I send a flying monkey down to Red Windmill to engage a violinist, for
mood music? What a most peculiar murderer she is turning out to be.

The Witch began to think about how she might disarm the girl. It was
hard to tell what her weapons were, except for that sort of inane good
sense and emotional honesty.

During dinner Dorothy began to cry.

"What, she would have preferred the vegetables to the cheese?" said Nanny.

But the girl would not answer. She set both her hands on the scrubbed
oaken tabletop, and her shoulders shook with grief. Liir longed to get
up and wrap his arms around her. The Witch nodded grimly that he was to
stay put. He whacked his milk mug hard on the table, in annoyance.

"It's all very nice," Dorothy said at last, sniffling," but I am so
worried for Uncle Henry and Auntie Em. Uncle Henry frets so when I'm
just a wee bit late from the schoolhouse, and Auntie Em-well, she can be
so cross when she's upset!"

"All Aunties are cross," said Liir.

"Eat up, for who knows when another meal will come your way," said the
Witch.

The girl tried to eat, but kept dissolving in tears. Eventually Liir
began to tear up, too. The little dog, Toto, begged for scraps, which
made the Witch think of her own losses. Killyjoy, who had been with her
eight years, a fly-ridden corpse going stiff on the hill among all his
progeny. She cared less about the bees and the crows, but Killyjoy was
her special pet.

"Well, this is some party," said Nanny. "I wonder if I should have
prettied things up with a candle."

"Kindle candle can dull," said Chistery.

Nanny lit a candle and sang "Happy Birthday to You," to make Dorothy
feel better, but no one joined in.

Then silence fell. Only Nanny kept eating, finishing the cheese and
starting on the candle. Liir was turning white and pink by turns, and
Dorothy had begun to stare blankly at a knothole in the polished wood of
the trestle table. The Witch scratched her fingers with her knife, and ran

the blade along her forefinger softly, as if it were the feather of a
pfenix.

"What's going to happen to me," said Dorothy, lapsing into a monotone.
"I shouldn't have come here."

"Nanny, Liir," said the Witch, "take yourselves off to the kitchen.
Bring the Lion with you."

"Is that old bag talking to me?" Nanny asked Liir. "Why's the little
girl crying, our food not good enough for her?"

"I'm not leaving Dorothy's side!" said the Lion.

"Don't I know you?" said the Witch in a low, even voice. "You were the
cub they did experiments with in the science lab at Shin long ago. You
were terrified then and I spoke up for you. I'll save you again if you
behave."

"I don't want to be saved," said the Lion petulantly.

"I know the feeling," said the Witch. "But you can teach me something
about Animals in the wild. Whether they revert, or how much. I take it
you were raised in the wild. You can be of service. You can protect me
when I go out of here with my Grimmerie, my book of magicks, my Malleus
Maleficarum, my mesmerizing incunabulum, my codex of scarabee, fylfot
and gammadion, my text thaumaturgical."

The Lion roared, so suddenly they were all jolted in their seats, even
Dorothy. "Thunder at night, devil's delight," observed Nanny, glancing
out the window. "I better take in the laundry."

"I'm bigger than you," said the Lion to the Witch, "and I'm not letting
Dorothy alone with you."

The Witch swooped down and gathered the little dog in her arms.
"Chistery, go dump this thing in the fishwell," she said. Chistery
looked dubious, but scampered away with Toto under his arm like a
yapping furry loaf of bread.

"Oh no, save him, someone!" said Dorothy. The Witch shot out her hand
and pinned her to the table, but the lion had catapulted into the
kitchen after the snow monkey and Toto.

"Liir, lock the kitchen door," shouted the Witch. "Bar it so they can't
come back."

"No, no," cried Dorothy, "I'll go with you, just don't hurt Toto! He's
done nothing to you!" She turned to Liir, and said, "Please don't let
that monkey hurt my Toto. The Lion is useless, don't trust him to save
my little dog!"

"Do I take it we'll have pudding by the fire?" said Nanny, looking up
brightly. "It's caramel custard."

The Witch took Dorothy's hand and began to lead her away. Liir suddenly
leaped over and took hold of Dorothy's other hand. "You old hag, let her
alone," he shouted.

"liir, really, you pick the most awkward times to develop character,"
said the Witch wearily, quietly. "Don't embarrass yourself and me with
this charade of courage."

"I'll be all right-just take care of Toto," said Dorothy. "Oh Liir, take
care of Toto, no matter what-please. He needs a home."

Liir leaned over and kissed Dorothy, who fell against the wall in
astonishment.

"Release me," mumbled the Witch. "Whatever my faults, I don't deserve this."


17
______
She pushed Dorothy ahead of her into the tower room, and locked the door
behind her. The long period of sleeplessness was making her head spin.
"What have you come for," she said to the girl. "I know why you have
tramped all the way from the Emerald City-but go on, tell me to my face!
Have you come to murder me, as the rumors say-or do you carry a message
from the Wizard, maybe? Is he now willing to bargain the book for Nor?
The magic for the child? Tell me! Or-I know-he has instructed you to
steal my book! Is it that!"

But the girl only backed away, looking left and right, for an escape.
There was no way out except the window, and that was a deadly fall.

"Tell me," said the Witch.

"I am all alone in a strange land, don't make me do this," said the girl.

"You came to kill me and then to steal the Grimmerie!"

"I don't know what you're talking about!"

"First give me the shoes," said the Witch, "for they're mine. Then we'll
talk."

"I can't, they won't come off," said the girl, "I think that Glinda put
a spell on them. I've been trying to get them off for days. My socks are
so sweaty, it's not to be believed."

"Give them me!" snarled the Witch. "If you go back to the Wizard with
them, you'll be playing right into his hands!"

"No, look, they're stuck!" shouted the girl. She kicked at one heel with
the other toe. "Look, see, I'm trying, I'm trying, they won't come off,
honest, promise! I tried to give them to the Wizard when he demanded
them, but they wouldn't come off! There's something the matter with
them, they're too tight or something! Or maybe I'm growing."

"You have no right to those shoes," said the Witch. She circled. The
girl backed away, stumbling over furniture, knocking over the beehive,
and stepping on the queen bee, who had emerged from the fragments.

"Everything I have, every little thing I have, dies when you come across
it," said the Witch. "There's Liir down below, ready to throw me over
for the sake of a single kiss. My beasts are dead, my sister is dead,
you strew death in your path, and you're just a girl! You remind me of
Nor! She thought the world was magic, and look what happened to her!"

"What, what happened?" said Dorothy, pitiably playing for time.

"She found out just how magic it was, she was kidnapped, and lives her
miserable life as a political prisoner!"

"But so have you kidnapped me, and I asked for none of it, nothing. You
must have mercy."

The Witch came near and grabbed the girl by the wrist. "Why do you want
to murder me," she said. "Can you really believe the Wizard will do as
he says? He doesn't know what truth means, so he does not even know how
he lies! And I did not kidnap you, you fool! You came here of your own
accord, to murder me!"

"I didn't come to murder anyone," said the girl, shrinking back.

"Are you the Adept?" said the Witch suddenly. "Aha! Are you the Third
Adept? Is that it? Nessarose, Glinda and you? Did Madame Morrible
conscript you for service to the hidden power? You work in collusion: my
sister's shoes, my friend's charm, and your innocent strength. Admit it,
admit you're the Adept! Admit it!"

"I'm not adept, I'm adopted," said the girl. "I'm sure not adept at
anything, can't you tell that?"

"You're my soul come scavenging for me, I can feel it," said the Witch.
"I won't have it, I won't have it. I won't have a soul; with a soul
there is everlastingness, and life has tortured me enough."

The Witch pulled Dorothy back to the corridor, and stuck the end of her
broom in a torch fire. Nanny was hobbling up the stairs leaning on
Chistery, who had some dishes of pudding on a tray. "I locked the whole
lot of them in the kitchen until they stop their roughhousing," Nanny
was muttering. "Such a hubbub, such a racket, such a wild rumpus, Nanny
won't have it, Nanny is too old. They're all beasts."

Below, in the dusty recesses of Kiamo Ko, the dog barked once or twice,
the lion roared and pounded against the kitchen door, and hr shrieked,
"Dorothy, we're coming!" But the Witch turned and shot out her foot, and
toppled Nanny over. The old woman rolled and slid, oohing and woohing,
down the stairs, Chistery chasing after her in consternation. The
kitchen door had burst its hinges, and the lion and Liir came tumbling
out, falling over the big heap of Nanny at the foot of the stairs. "Up,
you, up," shouted the Witch, "I'll have done with you before you have
done with me!"

Dorothy had wrenched herself free and dashed up the corkscrew stairs of
the tower ahead of the Witch. There was only one exit, and that was to
the parapet. The Witch followed in good speed, needing to finish the
deed before the Lion and Liir arrived. She would get the shoes, she
would take the Grimmerie, she would abandon Liir and Nor, and disappear
into the wilderness. She would burn the book and the shoes, and then she
would bury herself.

Dorothy was a dark shape, huddled over, retching on the stones.

"You haven't answered my question," said the Witch, poking the torch up
high, releasing spectres and ghosts among the shadows of the
castellations. "You've come hunting me down, and I want to know. Why
will you murder me?"

The Witch slammed the door behind her and locked it. All the better.

The girl could only gasp.

"You think they're not telling stories about you all over Oz? You think
I don't know the Wizard sent you here to bring back proof that I was dead?"

"Oh, that," said Dorothy, "that is true, but that's not why I came!"

"You can't possibly be a competent liar, not with that face!" The Witch
held the broom up at an angle. "Tell me the truth, and when you've
finished, then I'll kill you, for in times like these, my little one,
you must kill before you are killed."

"I couldn't kill you," said the girl, weeping. "I was horror-struck to
have killed your sister. How could I kill you too?"

"Very charming," said the Witch, "very nice, very touching. Then why did
you come here?"

"Yes, the Wizard said to murder you," Dorothy said, "but I never
intended to, and that's not why I came!"

The Witch held the burning broom even higher, closer, to look in the
girl's face.

"When they said ... when they said that it was your sister, and that we
had to come here . . . it was like a prison sentence, and I never wanted
to - - . but I thought, well, I would come, and my friends would come
with me to help. . . and I would come.. . and I would say..

"Say what," cried the Witch, on the edge.

"I would say," said the girl, straightening up, gritting her teeth, "I
would say to you: Would you ever forgive me for that accident, for the
death of your sister; would you ever ever forgive me, for I could never
forgive myself!"

The Witch shrieked, in panic, in disbelief. That even now the world
should twist so, offending her once again: Elphaba, who had endured
Sarima's refusal to forgive, now begged by a gibbering child for the
same mercy always denied her? How could you give such a thing out of
your own hollowness?

She was caught, twisting, trying, full of will, but toward what? A
fragment of the brush of the broom fluttered off, and lit on her skirt,
and there was a run of flames in her lap, eating up the dryest tinder in
the Vinkus. "Oh, will this nightmare never end," screamed Dorothy, and
she grabbed at a bucket for collecting rainwater that, in the sudden
fare-up of light, had come into view. She said, "I will save you!" and
she hurled the water at the Witch.


An instant of sharp pain before the numbness. The world was floods above
and fire below. If there was such a thing as a soul, the soul had
gambled on a sort of baptism, and had it won?

The body apologizes to the soul for its errors, and the soul asks
forgiveness for squatting in the body without invitation.

A ring of expectant faces before the light dims; they move in the

shadows like ghouls. There is Mama, playing with her hair; there is
Nessarose, stern and bleached as weathered timber. There is Papa, lost
in his reflections, looking for himself in the faces of the suspicious
heathen. There is Shell, not quite yet himself despite his apparent
wholeness.

They become others; they become Nanny in her prime, tart and officious;
and Ama Clutch and Ama Vimp and the other Amas, lumped together now in a
maternal blur. They become Boq, sweet and lithe and earnest, as yet
unbowed; and Crope and Tibbett in their funny, campy anxiety to be
liked; and Avaric in his superiority. And Glinda in her gowns, waiting
to be good enough to deserve what she gets.

And the ones whose stories are over: Manek and Madame Morrible and
Doctor Dillamond and most of all Fiyero, whose blue diamonds are the
blues of water and of sulfurous fire both. And the ones whose stories
are curiously unfinished-was it to be like this?-the Princess Nastoya of
the Scrow, whose help could not arrive in time; and Liir, the mysterious
foundling boy, pushing out of his pea pod. Sarima, who in her loving
welcome and sisterliness would not forgive, and Sarima's sisters and
children and future and past...

And the ones who fell to the Wizard, including Killyjoy and the other
resident creatures; and behind them the Wizard himself, a failure until
he exiled himself from his own land; and behind him Yackle, whoever she
was, if anyone, and the anonymous Adepts, if they existed, and the
dwarf, who had no name to share.

And the creatures of makeshift lives, the hobbled together, the
disenfranchised, and the abused: the Lion, the Scarecrow, the maimed Tin
Woodman. Up from the shadows for an instant, up into the light; then back.

The Goddess of Gifts the last, reaching in among flames and water,
cradling her, crooning something, but the words remain unclear.


18
______
Oz stretched out from Kiamo Ko a good several hundred miles to the west
and north, and even farther to the east and south. On the night the
Wicked Witch of the West died, anyone with the eyes to see so well could
have looked out from the parapet. Westward, the moon was rising

over the Thousand Year Grasslands. Though the peaceful Yunamata refused
to join them, the Aijiki clans and the Scrow were meeting to consider a
pact of alliance, given the Wizard's armies massing up in Kumbricia's
Pass. The Arjiki chieftain and the Princess Nastoya agreed to send a
delegation to the Witch of the West, and ask for guidance and support.
As they toasted her and wished her well, not an hour after her death,
the messenger crows Elphaba had dispatched for help were swooped upon by
nocturnal rocs and devoured.

The moon ran silver up and down the sides of the Great Kells, and silver
shadows settled in the valleys of the Lesser Kells. The scorpions of the
Sour Sands came out to sting, the skark of the Thursk Desert mated in
their nests. At the Kvon Altar practitioners of a sect so obscure that
it had no name made their nightly oblations for the souls of the dead,
assuming, as most do, that the dead had had souls.

The Quadling Country, a wasteland of mud and frogs, rotted quietly all
night, except for an incident in Qhoyre. A Crocodile entered a nursery
and chewed up a small baby. The Animal was destroyed, and both corpses
were burned, with loud wailing and anger.

In Gilhikin, the banks turned over their money to keep it fresh and
vibrant, the factories turned over their wares, the merchants turned
over their wives, the students in Shiz turned over intellectual
propositions, and the tiktok labor force met secretly, in what had used
to be the Philosophy Club, to hear the freed and grieving Grommetik talk
class revolution. Lady Glinda had a bad night, a night of shakes and
regret and pain; she guessed it was the early signs of gout from her
rich diet. But she sat up half the night and lit a candle in a window,
for reasons she couldn't articulate. The moon passed overhead in its
path from the Vinkus, and she felt its accusatory spotlight, and moved
back from the tall windows.

Across the low ridge of hills known as the Madeleines, into the Corn
Basket, looking into the windows of Colwen Grounds, the moon continued
its journey. Frex was asleep, dreaming of Turtle Heart and yes, of
Melena, his beautiful Melena, making him breakfast on the day he went in
to preach against the evil clock. Melena was a froth of beauty, huge as
a world, spinning him courage, daring, love. Frex hardly stirred when
Shell tiptoed in, back from some clandestine rendezvous, and came to sit
by the side of his bed. Shell wasn't sure he noticed, he wasn't sure

his father really woke up. "What I never could understand was the
teeth," mumbled Frex, "why the teeth?"

"Who knows why?" said Shell fondly, not understanding the dreamy murmur.

The moon on the Emerald City? It couldn't be seen; lights too bright,
energy too high, spirits too wired. No one looked for it. In a room,
surprisingly bare and simple for one so powerful and elevated, the
sleepless Wizard of Oz wiped his brow, and wondered how long his luck
would hold out. He had been wondering the same thing for forty years,
and he had hoped that luck would begin to seem habitual, deserved. But
he could hear the very mice chewing away at the foundations of his
Palace. The arrival of that Dorothy Gale, from Kansas, was a summons, he
knew it; he knew it when he saw her face. There was no point in
searching after the Grimmerie any longer. His avenging angel had come to
call him home. A suicide was waiting for him back in his own world, and
by now he ought to have learned enough to get through it successfully.

He had sent Dorothy, locked in those shoes as she was, to kill the
Witch. He had sent a girl in to do a man's job. If the Witch was the
victor-well, that was the troublesome girl out of the way, then.
Perversely, though, in a fatherly way, he half hoped Dorothy would get
through her trials all right.


It became a celebrated event, the death of the Wicked Witch of the West.
It was hailed as political assassination or a juicy murder. Dorothy's
description of what had happened was deemed self-delusion, at best, or a
bald-faced lie. Murder or mercy killing or accident, in an indirect way
it helped rid the country of its dictator.

Dorothy, more stunned than ever, made her way back to the Emerald City
with the Lion, the Tin Woodman, the Scarecrow, and Liir. There Dorothy
had her second famous audience with the Wizard. Perhaps he again tried
to pry the slippers off her for his own purposes, and perhaps Dorothy
outwitted him, spurred by the Witch's warnings. At any rate, she
presented him with something from the Witch's house to prove that she
had been there. The broom had been burnt beyond recognition, and the
Grimmerie had seemed too cumbersome to carry, so she brought the green
glass bottle that said MIRACLE EU- on the paper glued to the front.

It may merely be apocryphal that when the Wizard saw the glass bottle he
gasped, and clutched his heart. The story is told in so many ways,
depending on who is doing the telling, and what needs to be heard at the
time. It is a matter of history, however, that shortly thereafter, the
Wizard absconded from the Palace. He left in the way he had first
arrived-a hot-air balloon-just a few hours before seditious ministers
were to lead a Palace revolt and to hold an execution without trial.

A lot of nonsense has been circulated about how Dorothy left Oz. There
are some who say that she never did; they say as they said of Ozma
before her that she is in hiding, in disguise, patient as a maiden,
waiting to come back and show herself again. Others insist she flew up
into the sky like a saint ascending to the Other Land, waving her apron
giddily and clutching that damn fool dog.

Liir disappeared into the sea of humanity in the Emerald City, to hunt
for his half-sister, Nor. He was not heard of again for some time.

Whatever may have happened to the original shoes, everyone remembered
them as beautiful, even stunning. Well-fashioned name-brand imitations
were always available and never went out of style for very long. The
shoes or their replicas, with their suggestion of residual magic,
cropped up at so many public ceremonies that, like the relics of saints,
they began to multiply to fill the need.

And of the Witch? In the life of a Witch, there is no after, in the ever
after of a Witch, there is no hap pity; in the story of a Witch, there
is no afterword. Of that part that is beyond the life story, beyond the
story of the life, there is-alas, or perhaps thank mercy-no telling. She
was dead, dead and gone, and all that was left of her was the carapace
of her reputation for malice.


"And there the wicked old Witch stayed for a good long time."

"And did she ever come out?"

"Not yet."


The End