The Wicked Years Complete Collection
Page 8
“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.
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 Shiz 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 Shiz! 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 Shiz, 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 Shiz?” 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 Shiz 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 Shiz, 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 Shiz. 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 Shiz, 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.
Shiz! 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 café, 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 cloisonné 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.
“Now the rest of you are here without Amas, I understand,” said Madame Morrible, 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.