She did not remember the long trek there, except in small flashes; she remembered little of the year and change after Nessarose's birth. She had remembered Turtle Heart's death in vivid detail, but soon after she would forget. Even her mind was not truly masochistic, not then.
What Elphaba did remember, in a straight continous line, more or less, began when she was five years old, in the middle of nowhere, and she saw, for the second time in her young life, the death of a man.
Elphaba's parents were not overprotective, not of her, and not then. At five she was loose in Quadling Country, muddling around herself, left to avoid treacherous wet boggy ground and forage food on her own. Frex had left her to run about while he made his conversions, and Elphaba, not one to be constrained by any direct order, much less an implied one, had found her way into what passed for a town square in Ovvels.
She had never seen soldiers before, nor heard of them. There were no police in Ovvels; the community was peaceable and administered its own justice. And here were these men, so much larger than she, in their uniforms of a green much brighter than her skin, with the dark cross over the chest, the epaulets glinting red-gold in the foggy afternoon.
She was curious, but she felt her heart beat faster, and instinct made her hide behind a building and peek out. They had in their midst a man, a Quadling. He was young, twenty-five or so. There was a violet bruise already rising on his rosy skin. Elphaba could see, in the house behind him, the silhouette of a young Quadling woman holding a child in her arms.
The soldier hit the man again, and again, and finally he was down on the ground being kicked at by a dozen heavily booted feet, steel-toe booted feet.
Elphaba found herself ducking away, gasping in horror, and realized that she was not frightened. Fear was not the emotion that had curled itself around her esophagus. It was anger. Reckless anger.
She marched out from behind the building, into the soldiers' view, her small fists clenched.
"LEAVE HIM ALONE!" she demanded, and they turned to stare at her. But they had, for the moment, stopped the beating, and for that she was grateful.
"Go away, little lizard girl," one of them said. "Run home and play in the muck."
"I don't," said Elphaba fiercely. "Why do you hurt him?"
"Nothing for little mud girls to think about."
"yes, it is."
The soldier who had been speaking glared. Another said, "I have a girl that age, let me try."
He knelt down by Elphaba, still careful not to dirty his uniform. "Sweetheart," he said, and Elphaba knew she did not like him. "This is grown-up business, okay? Soldiers' business. We're just trying to make this town safe for little girls like you."
Elphaba's small, peaked face took on a ferocious cast.
"What about that little girl?" she asked, and pointed through the window, at the man's wife and child. The soldier considered the girl in front of him, determining that, despite her strange skin, she was not a Quadling.
"She is a Quadling," he said, "As are her parents. Quadlings, little girl, are not like you and me. They're closer to Animals."
Elphaba cocked her dark head and stared at the soldier with unnerving intensity.
"Then why do you want to make the town safe for them?"
She did not confirm or deny her acceptance of his belief, only questioned his immediate argument.
The man stuttered. "Because," he said. "It's our job."
"I don't like you," Elphaba said without breaking her unblinking, feline stare. "I like Quadlings and Animals better. Quadlings don't lie."
The soldiers laughed at her and told her she was an impudent little thing. She glared at them and said, "It's wrong."
"What is?" asked the one with the daughter her age.
"Beating on people cause you think you're better'n they are," said the five year old.
"Who do you belong to, you little chit?" asked the leader.
"I belong to myself," Elphaba answered, grinning.
"Who are your parents?" growled the leader, grabbing her thin wrist. Elphaba gave him a slanted, unreadable look with her dark eyes.
"Can't tell," she said, and slipped away.