With all the speculation and rumors abounding, only Glinda the Good could claim that she knew exactly what had happened with Dorothy Gale, thought she knew exactly what happened with the Wicked Witch of the West, and suspected she had a good idea about what had happened with the Wicked Witch of the East.
She suspected herself that her title of "Glinda the Good" was about to have a lot more meaning now than a mysterious and somewhat protective woman that floated around Oz by bubble. She had sent the Wizard off in shame, clutching that green bottle even as his balloon carried him off to the Other Land. And though the Wizard had elected the scarecrow, of all people, to be the new ruler of Oz, it seemed that the scarecrow had made a hasty retreat after receiving the title. (Glinda couldn't blame him, the people in Oz were all a bit stirred up about this Wizard business.)
And of course, Dorothy.
Glinda, having seen the power that those silver slippers had given Nessarose, perhaps even before they were magicked, suggested to a weeping Dorothy that perhaps they could carry her wherever she pleased. One wish to be returned to Kansas, and three clicks of her heels together, and Dorothy flew up into the sky, clutching fiercely her scrappy dog, and leaving the slippers to clatter down on to the cobblestones beneath her. (And Glinda, without a moment's hesitation, reached down and picked up those shoes, and hid them in the folds of her dress.)
The citizens of the Oz (and those who witnessed her magic departure, especially) were all too eager to claim that Dorothy was the return of Ozma. But whether she was or not, she was gone, leaving Glinda as the bearer of the grimmerie, (as well as those magic shoes,) and the sole remaining witch of Oz.
And so the people cheered when they saw her ("Look! It's Glinda!") and asked her their many questions. And as the sole ruler of Oz, she took it upon herself to answer every one.
"Glinda! Where has Dorothy gone? Will she return?"
"To the other land, I suppose. And I don't know if we'll ever see her again. She's done her best work here, I'm sure."
"Oh, Glinda, where are the magic slippers?"
"I can't say," she said, pushing one hand against the folds of her dress, feeling the place where the shoes burned beneath it. "It seems almost as if they've gone up and walked away."
But the most urgent question, in a way that was both relieving and heartbreaking, was by far, "Glinda? Is the Wicked Witch of the West really dead?"
"The melting occurred at the thirteenth hour after a bucket of water was thrown by our dear hero Dorothy. Indeed...the Wicked Witch of the West is dead."
Her line would become one of Glinda the Good's most memorable, and would be quoted and written down for a long time after it was spoken. Painting after painting would be sold of her floating there in her bubble before the time-dragon clock at dusk.
The initial reaction was almost as grand, as hats were thrown into the air, and people in the houses nearby threw what they could onto the streets (a scarf here, a colorful bit of paper there, a scattering of dried beans or buttons.) The message was carried out of the Emerald city to it's surroundings.
And Glinda performed the best she could, smiling and taking citizens' hands. At some point, she might have slipped away in her bubble, leaving the city to celebrate until dawn, if not for one more question.
"Glinda," a middle-aged woman called, decked out in a modest form of Emerald city garb. Glinda reached forward and took her hand as she asked, "Why does wickedness happen?"
This caught Glinda off guard, but after many years as a public figure, she was able to stammer out a response. "That is a good question...perhaps not one anyone can answer. For who can say if wickedness is something we are born with, or something that is given to us?"
In Glinda's experience, she had never met anyone who she thought was born wicked, even Madame Morrible. It always seemed like it was something thrust upon people, or that they acquired by accident or through trials in life. But judging by the hush that had fallen over the citizens dancing in the Emerald city, she realized this was not a conclusion they ever would have come to themselves. After all, it was their black-and-white mentality that had allowed the Wizard to gain so much power, and to condemn Nessarose, Elphaba, and even dear Fiyero.
"Even the Wicked Witch of the West had a childhood. She had a father and a mother. Her sister was her sister by blood, not just by name. Why, her father was the Brother Frexspar!"
There were a few murmurs in the crowd. Brother Frexspar was before their time, but a few of them must have heard his name in passing growing up. Brother Frexspar, servant of the Unnamed God, married out of lowly origins to Melena Thropp of Munchkinland, yet remained pious surrounded by decadence. Famous for his arguments about the validity of the Lurline myths, his profound distaste for the pleasure-faithers, and his horror with witch worship. He was perhaps most famous for claiming that the time-dragon clock, the very monument that Glinda now stood before, was worshipped as an idol.
"And her mother was Melena Thropp, the heir to eminence of Munchkinland."
Melena Thropp, herself, was a story, albeit one Glinda was unfit to tell. She never became the Eminent Thropp; her father outlived her and she died very young. For this reason, information about her was far more speculative than Frex's. There were rumors of a mad sister, and many agreed that she herself was hardly fit for eminence. She was a silly thing, not unlike Glinda in her youth, and was vain to the point of being promiscuous. It was said she wore loose, lacy dresses, and perfumed undergarments, and met with many men before and during her married life. It was for this reason that people suspected that was why her marriage was arranged with the lowly but devout Frexspar.
"There's was not the happiest union, and their difference of ideals must have clashed when they were together. And so they were often apart - Frex often went off to spread the word of the Unnamed God, and she stayed close to home where she acquired a...secret."
While it certainly made it easier for the young, non-working minister to feed himself while he preached and spread the word of the Unnamed God, the money, the lavishness of the living spaces, the parties, the food and the wine was worldly and frightening to Frexspar. But Melena, already trapped with a minster husband by no choice of her own, was not eager to leave the estate and live in humbler conditions deep within Munchkinland. She loved her velvet sheets, pricey clothes, and servants; she knew nothing else, so she would not budge.
Either much to the disapproval or ignorance of the Eminent Thropp, Frexspar went off without Melena, to the Quadling country and the blooming Emerald city to preach from the books of the Unnamed God.
Glinda, nor anyone but the Wizard knew how Melena had met Oscar Diggs, but Glinda could imagine how he must have looked to Melena. Handsome, charming, mysterious (he was from the other world, after all) and twice as rich as Frexspar and half as rich as her. They were lovers and Melena was addicted to the alcoholic green elixir that he had formulated himself, and this was the creation for the Wicked Witch of the West.
Glinda hesitated, however, to reveal so soon after his departure this secret of the Wizard's, so instead she said simply, "Melena had an affair with a man from the other world, and he brought with him a powerful green elixir that poor Melena Thropp could not drink enough of."
It was uncertain whether or not Frexspar ever suspected that Elphaba was not his own, but Glinda knew that Frexspar had always rejected her, if simply for her color.
Her birth was oddly mythicized, even to Glinda, but perhaps that was just what happened to those so infamous. The story claimed Melena was out in the Emerald city, and went into labor suddenly, in the rain, and was aided and brought out of the rain by a passing few women who recognized her as a Thropp. She then gave birth to the Wicked Witch of the West within the newly built time-dragon clock, which Frexspar had protested only days earlier. And at dawn, an exhausted and frightened Melena walked out of the body of the clock, holding in her arms her green daughter, and brought her home to deep disappointment from Frex.
The story seemed so fable-like to Glinda that she could scarcely believe it, but at the same time, there had been so many fantastical elements to the Witch's life. Especially the bit about water…
Glinda twisted her wand in her hands, watching the jewels catch the reds and golds of the setting sun, and casting them against the clock face.
"It could not have been easy...Frexspar seemed to think of her as a kind of punishment from the Unnamed God. Growing up in Munchkinland must have been hard with her green skin and talent for sorcery, oh, you know how children can be…"
As her friend and roommate, Glinda knew a things about Elphaba that few did, and even after her death, they were not all things she was inclined to share. Glinda was clear in her mind about one thing: Melena Thropp had been one of the few that loved the Wicked Witch of the West. This was something that Frexspar might have been inclined to deny, and possibly even Nessa at the end of her life.
But Glinda had seen Elphaba clutching that green bottle, and heard how hard her childhood was after Melena's death.
And she wondered how it must have seemed to Melena: she herself was a kind of reject in her own family, possibly not the original heir, and a disappointment to her father. She was trapped in a loveless marriage, even more so after her daughter's birth. It was hard not to imagine that Melena might have come to see her daughter as a kindred spirit, and was able to offer her love.
"Glinda!" a voice deep in the crowd called, and she rose in her bubble a ways to see him better.
"Is it true that you and the Wicked Witch of the West were once friends?"
Yes, it was true, Glinda the Good was one of the few that loved the Wicked Witch of the West.
"We were," she said, without much hesitance, and there were gasps in the crowd, which made her uneasy.
"Well, we were, in college," she said. "Shiz University. I was from Gillikin, and Shiz was only an hour's train ride away, so it was the college I was destined to go to, you could say. But it is true, the Wicked Witch of the West traveled all the way from Munchkinland to attend there as well. And by the slightest of chances, we came to know each other very well…"
(To be continued…)