It was the month before Elphaba's twentieth birthday when Nessarose saw it. On the Shiz campus sat a pretty little bookstore, which was tucked out of the way of most student traffic. Amidst the frosted windows and cobblestone exterior sat a display of books in the front window. Behind the glass panes sat a thick, hardback volume titled "The Chessmaster's Daughter."
"Boq, could you take me inside that store?" Nessa asked. He complied wordlessly, wheeling her inside and holding the door open for her.
Shortly before leaving for Shiz, Elphaba had saved up and bought a copy of that exact book. That version didn't have golden engraved letters or a nice picture of a chessboard on the front. Her copy had been bought from a secondhand store back home. Its pages were tattered and dog-eared, while its binding had begun to fall off. Elphaba had devoured it anyway, sneaking it into classes and under her covers at night. Nessa had listened to more than one rambling speech about it.
The book depicted the story of a young woman's journey into politics after her father, and how she struggled to make change and be taken seriously. However, Elphaba would never see it finished. The last pages of her copy were blank. Printing mistake, courtesy of the shoddy nature of the publishers. Elphaba had slammed the book shut, exclaiming to Nessa, "I can't believe it! How could this mistake get by? This completely ruins the entire narrative structure! Now I'll never know whether Deania gets the proposition passed! Or what all the chess symbolism was building to!" Still, the defective copy proudly remained on her bookshelf.
In the bookstore, Nessa located a copy of the novel and flipped to the last pages. They were not, in fact, blank. Without a second thought, she bought it that day. She wrapped it in bright blue paper and tied it with a piece of twine. The gift sat on Nessa's dresser, waiting to be opened.
One day, Elphaba left on a train for the Emerald City and didn't return. Her birthday came and went, but wherever she was, she didn't so much as acknowledge Nessa's existence. Of course, perhaps she was in a tight spot at the time or was simply too far away that day. "That day" multiplied into more days, which later blended into weeks and months. Still gone. So much for promising to take care of her. Shiz really was different. At least before, her sister only attracted the scorn of her classmates, not the entire country.
One day, Nessa snatched the book off her dresser and buried it in the depths of her closet. There it stayed. It only saw the light of day when she pulled out the right dress and saw a swatch of blue paper underneath it, mocking her. Then, she quickly covered it up again and shut the door. When Elphaba's twenty-first birthday passed, and then her twenty-second, the gift remained in that exact spot, languishing in the bottom of a closet.
Elphaba would've been nearing her twenty-third birthday by the time the book was touched again. Nessa had been packing clothes into her suitcase, for good this time. The dorm room was empty and bare, with only Morrible's half showing signs of life at all. Nessa gave a pinched glare as she pulled the book from the closet and blew off the layer of dust. Did the cursed thing even deserve to be taken home? The sight of it only served as a reminder of the empty seat next to her at graduation.
With a sigh, her glare faded. She tossed the gift into her suitcase. What else would she do with it? Elphaba had to come crawling back home eventually. So the book stayed, journeying from Shiz to Munchkinland. When the housekeeper of Colwen Grounds helped her unpack and asked her where the book was to go, Nessa had it placed on her bookshelf. Just like Elphaba would have.
The book rested there until one fateful day when Nessa stormed into her bedroom, wheels scraping the hardwood floor in a painful screech. She strained to reach the book off her shelf, knocking several of her own books off in the process. Black-clad, white-faced, and glassy-eyed, she tried and failed to keep her hands from shaking. She wheeled out of her room and ordered the housekeeper to take her downstairs.
Her father was dead. The man who called her his "precious little girl," and who took her to the theater on her thirteenth birthday, and who tucked her into bed every night no matter what political responsibilities faced him in that moment, was dead. And it was all Elphaba's fault. Nobody said that out loud, not even the doctors, but she knew it was true. The witch didn't even make an appearance at his funeral. There wasn't even a letter. Clearly, she didn't give a twig about her family.
Nessa was wheeled in front of the fireplace in the living room as per her instructions, and was swiftly left alone when the housekeeper scurried off to some other duty. The fireplace crackled and burned, but it was still so cold.
She held the gift in front of her. The blue paper and twine were the first to go. Nessa daintily picked off the tape, removed the paper in one piece, and threw it into the fireplace. Only the book was left. She opened it up to the final page, ripped it out, and threw it to the flames. The ending pages went first, but Nessa made sure to rip each and every page from its binding. It became a methodical, clinical process. Tear out a page, or two or three or five, and depose of it in the fire. Every printed word and intricate drawing was torn apart until nothing but an empty husk of a book remained.
Nessa spared one last glance to the gift, now nothing but a cover and spine, before tossing that into the fire as well. Folding her hands primly on her lap, she watched on as the fire leapt and danced. The hand-drawn cover illustrations were eaten away into smoldering black ashes.