She flew along the waterway, above trading vessels and islands, until it fed at last into Restwater, Oz’s largest lake. She kept to its southern edge, and took a whole night to traverse it, as it endlessly lapped in black oily silk waves, into sedge and swamp. She had trouble finding the mouth of the Munchkin River, which drained into Restwater from the eastern direction. Once she did, though, it was easy to locate the Yellow Brick Road. The farmland beyond grew even more lush. The effects of the drought, so drastic in her childhood, had been eradicated, and dairy farms and small villages seemed to prosper, happy as a child’s toy town set, cunning and cozy in the wrinkled, nappy land of arable soil and accommodating climate.
The farther east she went, however, the more torn up the highway became. Crowbars had pried out bricks, trees had been felled and brush walls erected. It looked as if a few of the smaller bridges had been dynamited. A safeguard against retaliation by the Wizard’s army?
Seven days after leaving her chambers at Kiamo Ko, Elphaba flew into the hamlet of Colwen Grounds, and slept under a green bay tree. When she awoke, she asked a merchant for the great house, and he tremblingly pointed her the way, as if she were a demon. So a green skin still gives Munchkinlanders the creeps, she observed, and walked the last couple of miles, and arrived at the front gates of Colwen Grounds a little after breakfast.
She had heard her mother speak of Colwen Grounds, wistfully and angrily, as they had slopped in waterproof boots through six inches of Quadling Country water. Elphie’s years in the smug antiquity of Shiz, and the pomp of the Emerald City, ought to have prepared her for an imposing mansion. But she was startled, even shocked, at the grandeur of Colwen Grounds.
The gate was gilded, the forecourt swept clean of every scrap of grass and dung, and a bank of topiary saints in terra-cotta pots lined the balcony above the massive front door. Dignitaries with ribbons denoting new rank and prestige in the Free State of Munchkinland, she guessed, stood in small groups to one side. Coffee cups in hand, the officials had apparently just finished an early morning privy council meeting. Inside the gate, swordsmen stepped neatly up and barred her way. She began to protest—instantly branded a menace and a loon, she could see—and she was about to be ejected when a figure wandered into view from around the corner of a folly, and called for them to stop.
“Fabala!” he said.
“Yes, Papa, I’m here,” she answered, with a child’s politeness.
She turned. The dignitaries paused in their discussions, and then resumed, as if realizing that overhearing this reunion would be the height of rudeness. The guards withdrew their barrier when Frex approached. His hair was thin and long and caught up by a rawhide implement, as it always had been. His beard was the color of cream and reached his waist when he took his hands away from it.
“This is the sister of the Eminence of the East,” said Frex, staring at Elphaba, “and my oldest daughter. Let her pass through, dear men, now and every time she approaches.” He reached and caught her hand, and turned his head as a bird might to see her through one capable eye. The other eye, she realized, was dead.
“Come, we will greet each other in private, away from this attention,” said Frex. “My word, Fabala, you have become your mother in these long years!” He linked his arm into hers, and they went into the building through a side door and found a small salon done up in saffron silks and plum velvet cushions. The door closed behind them. Frex lowered himself cautiously to the sofa and patted the upholstery next to him. She sat down, wary, tired, astonished at the wealth of her own feeling for him. She was full of need. But, she reminded herself, you’re a grown woman.
“I knew you would come if I wrote,” he said. “Fabala, I always knew that.” He wrapped her in his arms, stiffly. “I may cry for a minute.” When he was through, he asked her where she had gone, and what she had done, and why she had never come back.
“I was not sure there was a back to come to,” she answered, realizing the truth of it as she spoke. “When you finished converting a town, Papa, you moved on to new fields. Your home was in the pasture of souls; mine never was. Besides, I had my own work to do.” She added, a moment later, in a low voice, “Or I thought I did.”
She mentioned her years in the Emerald City, but did not say why.
“And was Nanny right? Were you a maunt? I didn’t raise you for such submission,” he said. “I’m surprised. Such conformity and obedience—”
“I was no more a maunt than I ever was a unionist,” she chided him gently, “but I lived with the maunts. They did good work, whatever the error or inspiration of their beliefs. It was a time of recuperation from a difficult passage. And then, last year, I went to the Vinkus, and I guess I’ve made my home there, although for how long I cannot say.”
“And what do you do?” he said. “Are you married?”
“I’m a witch,” she answered. He recoiled, peered through the working eye to see if she spoke in jest.
“Tell me about Nessie before I see her, and Shell,” she said. “Your letter sounded as if you thought she needed help. I’ll do what I can in the short while I can be here.”
He told her about her sister’s rise to Eminence, and the secession in the late spring. “Yes, yes, I know of it but not why,” she said, prodding. So he described the burning of a grange where opposition meetings had been gathering, the reported rape of a couple of Munchkinlander maidens following a cotillion of the Wizard’s army garrisoned near Dragon Cupboard. He mentioned the Massacre at Far Applerue and the heavy taxation on farm crops. “The last straw,” he said, “as far as Nessie was concerned, anyway, was the callow despoiling by the Wizard’s soldiers of simple country meetinghouses.”
“Unlikely last straw,” said Elphaba. “Isn’t the back room of a colliery as holy a place to pray as a meetinghouse? I mean, according to teaching?”
“Well, teaching,” said Frex. He shrugged; such distinctions were beyond him now. “Nessie was incensed, and communicated her outrage, and before she knew it the spark had been thrown out and the tinder caught. Within a week of her firing off a furious letter to the Emperor Wizard himself—a dangerous and seditious act—the revolutionary fever had coalesced around her. It happened right here in the forecourt of Colwen Grounds. It was magnificent, and you’d have guessed Nessie was groomed for treason. She addressed the senior men among the farming communities both near and far, and kept her religious agenda in check, sensibly, I think. So her appeal for their support was overwhelmingly answered. There was a unanimous approval for secession.”
Papa’s gone pragmatic in his old age, Elphaba observed with some surprise.
“But how did you slip through the border patrols?” he asked. “Things being what they are—hotting up, as they say.”
“I just flew right through, a little black bird at nighttime,” she answered, smiling at him, and touching his hand. It was glazed and mottled pink, like a lake lobster on the boil. “But what I don’t know, Papa, is why you called me here. What do you expect me to do?”
“I had thought you might join your sister in her seat of authority,” he said, with the simple-minded hope of one whose family has been too long apart. “I know who you are, Fabala. I doubt you have much changed over the years. I know your cunning and your conviction. I also know that Nessie is at the mercy of her religious voices, and she could slip and undo the terrible good she is helping to create right now by being a focal figure for resistance. If that happens, it will not go well for her.”
So I am to be a whipping girl, thought Elphaba, I am to be a first line of defense. Her pleasure evaporated.
“And it will not go well for them, the eager supporters,” Frex said, waving a hand to indicate most of Munchkinland. His face sagged—his smile was an effort too, she thought coolly—and his shoulders fell. “They have had more than a generation of gentle dictatorship from our Glorious Wizard scoundrel—oh, even I forget, we’re now in the Free State of Munchkinland—these farmers surely underestimate the size of the eventua
l retaliation. In fact, Shell has found from reliable sources that the stockpiles of grain in the Emerald City are massive, and we can be left for some time without needing to be overrun. Short of routing some divisions of soldiers across the border, and jailing some drunken hooligans, this has been a most genteel disengagement so far. We are deluded into believing we are safe. I mean Nessie is deluded too, I think. You, I have always felt, had a clearer mind about you. You can help her prepare, you can provide the balance and the support.”
“I always did that, Papa,” she said. “In childhood and at college. Now I am told she can stand up for herself.”
“You’ve heard of my precious shoes,” he said. “I bought them from a decrepit crone, and then I retooled them for Nessa with my own hands, using skills in glass and metal that I had once learned from Turtle Heart. I made them to give her a sense of beauty, but I didn’t expect them to be enchanted by someone else. I am not sorry they are. But Nessa now thinks she needs no one, to help her stand or help her govern. She listens less than ever. In some ways I think those shoes are dangerous.”
“I wish you had made them for me, Papa,” she said in a quiet voice.
“You didn’t need them. You had your voice, your intensity, even your cruelty as your armor.”
“My cruelty!” She reared back.
“Oh, you were a fiendish little thing,” said Frex, “but so what, children grow into and out of themselves. You were a terror when you first were around other children. You only calmed down when we began to travel and you got to hold the baby. It was Nessarose who tamed you, you know. You have her to thank; she was holy and blessed even from the day she was born. Even as an infant, she soothed your wildness with her obvious need. You don’t remember that, I suppose.”
Elphie wasn’t able to remember, she wasn’t able to think about all that. Even the idea of being cruel was slipping from her. Instead, she was trying to feel fondness toward her father, despite the exhaustion of being commandeered to be a second lieutenant once again, in service of dear needy Nessarose. She concentrated on her father’s concern for the citizens of Munchkinland. Ever a pastoral sensibility, his. Though rejecting his theology, she adored him for his commitment.
“I must hear more about Turtle Heart one day,” she said in a light voice, “but now, I suppose I should go greet my sister. And I will think about what you say, Papa. I can’t imagine being part of a governmental troika, with you and Nessarose—or a committee, should Shell be involved too. But I’ll suspend judgment for a while. And Shell, Papa, how is he?”
“Behind enemy lines, so they say,” Frex answered as she got up to leave. “He is a foolhardy boy and will be among the first casualties, once this really gets going. He resembles you in some ways.”
“He’s gone green?” she asked, amused.
“He’s stubborn as sin stains,” he answered.
Nessarose was secluded in an upstairs parlor, conducting her morning meditation. Frex saw that Elphaba was given license to wander about the house and demesne. After all, in another configuration of events, Elphaba could have been (or could yet become) the Eminent Thropp, the Eminence of the East, the nominated head of the Free State of Munchkinland. Frex watched his green daughter amble down marble corridors, dragging her broom like a charwoman, gazing at the ormolu, the damask, the fresh flowers, the servants in livery, the portraits. He felt, as always, a twinge of pain deep in his breast, for the hidden and unknowable things that he had done wrong in raising her. But he was glad that she was here at last.
Elphaba found her way into a private chapel at the end of a hall of polished mahogany. It was baroque rather than ancient, and it was in the midst of being redecorated. Nessarose must have ordered the frescoes to be whitewashed; perhaps the succulent images would distract people from their meditative tasks. Elphie sat on a bench on the side, amidst buckets of limestone wash and paintbrushes and ladders. She did not pretend to pray, though she felt very uneasy about this whole thing. She trained her gaze, to focus her mind, on a huge section still boasting its images. It featured several rotund angels levitating with the aid of sizable wings. Their garments had been cut to accommodate the anatomical irregularity, she saw. They were rather full-bodied dames, but the wings weren’t bulging with straining arteries nor snapping at the tip. The artist had considered the optimal length and breadth of wing required to hoist ample ladies aloft. The formula looked to be about three times wing length to the length of arm, corrected perhaps to account for the portliness. If you could sweep your way to the Other Land on wings, what about on a broom? she wondered. And realized she must be very tired; usually she’d cut off senseless speculation about unionist nonsense like an afterlife, a Beyond, an Other Land.
I should remember my lessons from that life sciences course, she thought. All the devastating borders of knowledge Doctor Dillamond was about to cross. I almost understood some of it. I could stitch wings onto Chistery. He could join me in flight. What a lark.
She rose and went to find her sister.
Nessarose was less surprised to see Elphaba than Elphie would have guessed. Perhaps, Elphie considered, it was because Nessa had become used to being the center of attention. Then again, she had always been the center of attention. “Darling Elphie,” she said, looking up from a pair of identical books some attendant had laid out, next to each other, so she could read four pages without calling for someone to turn the page. “Give us a kiss.”
“Oh there, then,” Elphie said, obliging. “How are you, Nessie? You look fine.”
Nessarose stood, in her beautiful shoes, and smiled brilliantly. “The grace of the Unnamed God gives me strength, as ever,” she said.
But Elphaba could not be annoyed. “You have risen, and I don’t just mean to your feet,” she said. “History has chosen you for a role, and you’ve accepted it. I’m proud of you.”
“You needn’t be proud,” said Nessarose. “But thank you, dear. I thought you’d probably come. Did Father drag you here to take care of me?”
“No one dragged me here, but Papa did write.”
“So all those years in solitude, and political turmoil brings you out at last. Where were you?”
“Here and there.”
“You know we thought you’d died,” said Nessarose. “Drape that shawl around my shoulders and fix it with a pin, will you, so I needn’t call a maid? I mean that awful, awful time when you left me alone in Shiz. I am still furious with you about it, I just remembered.” She curled her lip, prettily; Elphaba was glad to see she possessed at least a residual sense of humor.
“We were all young then, and perhaps I was wrong,” said Elphie. “It didn’t do you any lasting harm, anyway. At least not so I can see.”
“I had to put up with Madame Morrible all by myself, for two more years. Glinda was a help for a while, then she graduated and went on. Nanny was my salvation, but she was old even then. She’s gone on to you lately, hasn’t she? Well, back then I felt horribly alone. Only my faith saw me through.”
“Well, faith will do that,” said Elphie, “if you’ve got it.”
“You speak as one still living in the shadowland of doubt.”
“In fact I think we have more important things to discuss than the state of my soul or lack thereof. You have a revolution on your hands—sorry, I guess I’ve gotten out of the habit!—and you’re the resident commander general. Congratulations.”
“Oh, tiresome events of the distracting world, yes yes,” said Nessarose. “Look, it’s just beautiful out there in the gardens. Let’s go walk for a bit and get some air. You look green about the gills—”
“All right, I deserved that—”
“—and there’s plenty of time to go into diplomatic matters. I have a meeting in a little while, but there’s time for a stroll. You should get to know this place. Let me show it to you.”
5
Elphaba could only get Nessarose’s attention for small snatches of time. However dismissive of the demands of leadership, Nessarose wa
s clearheaded about her schedule, and spent hours preparing for meetings.
And at first the discussion was frivolous—family memories, school days. Elphie was impatient to get around to the meat of the matter here. But Nessarose wouldn’t be rushed. Sometimes she let Elphie sit in when she held audiences with citizens. Elphie wasn’t entirely pleased with what she saw.
One afternoon an old woman from some hamlet in the Corn Basket came in. She made obeisance in a most disgusting and obsequious manner, and Nessarose seemed to shine back at her with glory. The woman complained that she had a maid who, having fallen in love with a woodcutter, wanted to leave her service to get married. But the old woman had already given three sons to the new local militia for defense, and she and the maid were all the labor available to bring in the crops. If the maid ran off with her woodcutter, the crops would spoil and she would be ruined. “And all for the sake of liberty,” she concluded bitterly.
“Well, what do you want me to do about it?” said the Eminence of the East.
“I can give you two Sheep and a Cow,” said the woman.
“I have livestock—” said Nessarose, but Elphaba interrupted and said, “Did you say Sheep? A Cow? You mean Animals?”
“My very own Animals,” the woman replied proudly.
“How do you come to own Animals?” Elphaba asked, her teeth clenched. “Are Animals no more than chattel now in Munchkinland?”
“Elphie, please,” said Nessarose quietly.
“What will you take to release them?” demanded Elphie, in a passion.
“I already said. Do something about this woodcutter.”
“What do you have in mind?” interrupted Nessarose, displeased that her sister was usurping her role as arbiter of justice.
“I brought you his axe. I thought you might bewitch it and cause it to kill him.”
The Wicked Years Complete Collection Page 37