Green: The Life and Times of Fae, the Witch's Granddaughter
Chapter 1: Infanthood
Green. Liir stared at the infant that he held in his arms. Green. He smiled, hugged her close, and went inside. He laid Candle's daughter in the basket by the fire. Could she really be his, too? She was green, like Elphaba, who everyone said was his mother. But that didn't explain why his daughter was green and he wasn't. Did the gene for green skin skip a generation or did it only affect girls? Liir was stumped; he had never been very good at genetics.
The baby whimpered. Liir wrapped the raggedy blanket more tightly around her. She still didn't have a name, Liir realized.
The memory of seeing his mother and father in the mirror years ago popped into his head. He strained his memory, trying to remember what Fiyero's code name for Elphaba had been.
"Fae," he said aloud. That was it. Fiyero had called her. Fae. That was the perfect name for the girl who looked so much like her grandmother.
Years passed. Fae grew into an inquisitive two-year-old. She pulled plants out of the ground and giggled as she threw them into the air.
One summer day, she heard a disturbance in the barn. Fae scooted into the building on her knees, with Liir following at her heels. She scooted over to a zither-like instrument that lay on the floor.
A domingon.
Fae was enraptured by the instrument. She plucked one string, and then cocked her head, listening intently to the sound that it produced. She plucked another, lower-pitched, string and listened to that one intently, too. Fae then plucked both strings at the same time, and then made a face, as if she knew that the chord wasn't quite right.
Liir stared at her. She was a lot like Candle in only two ways: one, music came naturally to her, and two, she was quiet. Fae had yet to say her first word, or even start babbling in that language all babies seemed to master.
Before long, little Fae was plucking out scales and arpeggios on the domingon.
"Alright you," said Liir, scooping her up, "naptime!"
Fae kicked and screamed and cried and reached for the domingon as Liir carried her out of the barn. Every day, whether Liir liked it or not, Fae would crawl into the barn to decipher the secrets of the domingon.