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

  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 us? . . .”

  “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 time 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 Quad-ling 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 th
ese capsules.”

  “What for?”

  “I did what I told you I’d do,” said Nanny in a conspiratorial voice. “Last fall I poked around the Lower Quarter of our fair capital on your behalf—”

  The young woman was suddenly engaged. “Nanny you didn’t! How clever! 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 future.”

  “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 roasted 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 she 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 felltop 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.”

  Galinda

  I

  Wittica, Settica, Wiccasand Turning, Red Sand, Dixxi House, change at Dixxi House for Shiz; 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 Shiz 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 Gillikin, with its fox haunts, its dripping dells, its secluded ancient pagan temples to Lurline. To them, Shiz 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.