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

by Gregory Maguire

  “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 Oz, 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 chattelizing 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 hoo. 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.

  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 edification 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—Elphaba.” He wasn’t going to let her get away with whatever game she was playing. He withdrew, 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. When 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.”