The Wicked Years Complete Collection

by Gregory Maguire

  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 café 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 café 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 Unna
med 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 “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 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 mo
oning 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.