Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West Read online

“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 faithers—the pfaithers—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 is dangerous propaganda, malice incarnate. No one knows if there is such 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 burnoose 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 Ama Clutch is already here and so is Ama Clipp 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 “Capri
ce-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 Morrible 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 Morrible 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 Shiz 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 hollyflight 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 smallwork 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 hollyflight 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.”