Disclaimer: I don't own Wicked, but I do own a copy of the book by the wondrous Gregory Maguire!
Chapter Two
Quite Possibly the Longest Day of My Life
"Outlandish," Nessa reads from the dictionary, in that annoyingly formal voice she uses for reading things out, "adjective. Strange, eccentric, often to extremes."
"Outlandish," I repeat, mimicking her voice, "definition: Mother."
"Fiera!" says my sister, lowering the book to stare at me in annoyance.
"What?" I widen my eyes innocently, "I'm only being honest. She is outlandish. How many people d'you know who have mothers like ours?"
"You are strange," says Nessa, closing the dictionary and returning to the essay she's writing for school. I don't know what it's about, and I don't care, but Nessa seems pretty interested in whatever it is. She's scribbling furiously, her head bent low toward the page. It's so quiet, I swear I can hear the scratching of her fancy fountain pen against the paper.
"I'm bored," I announce, stretching my arms up over my head, "let's do something."
Nessa pretends not to hear me.
"Nessa!" I scrunch up a piece of paper into a little ball and aim it carefully at her head, "come on. Stop working!"
Finally, she looks up at me, her mouth a straight line. "You just made me smudge the whole thing!" she complains, "and I don't want to do anything right now. I'm working, and don't you have work to do?"
I shrug my shoulders. "I do," I say blithely, "but I'm not doing it."
Nessa rolls her eyes. "You," she mutters, "are irrepressible." 'Irrepressible' is her favourite word for me. I learnt from her that it means 'impossible to influence or control' or something like that.
"And," she adds sourly, "you're never going to be good at anything, if you don't try."
I put on my best sad face. "Nessarose Glinda Tiggular," I say, pretending to feel wounded, "I can't believe you think so little of me!"
She snorts disbelievingly. "I'm just saying –" she starts, but I interrupt quickly, cutting her off before she can go into one of her lectures.
"What's the point of homework and lessons?" I ask her, "When we aren't ever going to be able to get real jobs. Come on, who's going to employ the Wicked Witch's kids? And besides, I'm not interested in –" I wave my right hand vaguely – "all that stuff."
The kitchen door bangs open and Liir strolls in, back from helping some villager fix the roof of his house, which was destroyed in last week's storm. My brother, with his dark eyes and shiny black hair, looks a lot like Mother, though without the green skin of course. Thankfully, we've all inherited our father's Vinkun tan instead of our mother's verdigris (that's her word for it, not mine, by the way).
"Well that was a waste of time," says Liir, sitting down beside Nessa and putting his feet up on the table without bothering to take off his boots, "all we did was move things around."
"You got paid for it though," I point out, but Liir doesn't seem to think this matters all that much.
"So?" he folds his arms irritably, "it was still a waste of my time."
I can't see that much point in arguing with him, and I'm about to change the subject when Liir says suddenly:
"You know the Cedar family? The ones whose roof I was supposedly helping to fix?"
Nessa and I both nod.
"What about them?" I want to know, "they're sorcerers? They've got a secret shrine to the Wizard? They're keeping a dragon in their yard?"
"For Oz's sake, Fiera," Liir sighs exasperatedly, "can't you ever be serious?"
Liir is very serious – not sensible, like Nessa. Just solemn and serious.
"What?" I ask him, "It could happen."
Nessa closes her eyes for a moment. Dear Lurline, I imagine her praying, please give my sister some common sense. "No," she says aloud, "it couldn't. Go on, Liir. What were you going to say?"
"They've got a picture in their house," he tells us, "of Mother and Glinda the Good, standing together before the Wizard... like they were going to fight him, or something. Mrs Cedar painted it herself, when she was younger."
"Really?" this gets my attention, "but I thought Glinda the Good was on the side of the Wizard."
"So did I," Liir adds, looking just as confused as I do.
But Nessa, to both of our astonishment, puts in quietly: "They used to be friends, you know, Mother and Glinda. I hear her talking about her, sometimes, to..." to Fiyero. My father. Who is not there.
"She talks about Galinda," I point out, "not Glinda the Good. It's not the same name."
"They are the same person," Nessa confides, "she told me, when I asked who this Galinda was. She talks about Galinda and Boq and Nessarose and Morrible, you see. And I know who Nessarose was, of course, and I've heard of Morrible, but I didn't know who the other two were. Galinda is Glinda the Good – she changed her name in honour of some Goat professor or something like that."
Liir looks mildly surprised, but me, I'm out of my seat in seconds, pacing up and down and trying to get to grips with the idea. Mother, friends with Glinda the Good? Yeah, that's likely.
"Why didn't you mention this before?" I want to know.
"Because," Nessa says calmly, "I didn't think it mattered all that much. It was years ago."
"Why aren't they friends anymore?" I demand, "Why does Glinda the Good still stand by the Wizard?"
Nessa pauses for a moment, remembering, before answering me. "Glinda believes that Mother is dead," she tells me, "because no one could know that the Wicked Witch wasn't really dead, you see. And she stands by the Wizard, I expect, because she believes there's nothing else she can do."
"So," I conclude, "she's even more of a coward than that Dorothy's cowardly Lion was."
Nessa looks horrified that I'd even dream of suggesting such a thing. "Glinda the Good is no coward, Fiera," she responds hotly, "she is trapped in a world where she has no option but to bow to the Wizard's Will."
"Yeah, yeah," I mumble, "thanks for the lesson. I'm going to see mother." And with that, I turn and rush off out of the room and up the spiral staircase to the room at the very top of the castle – the tower where Mother sits night and day, practicing new forms of magic in the hope that they will help her find her missing husband.
Elphaba
A person does not just simply vanish into thin air. It just doesn't happen –
Charm for creating illusions! Huh! What do I want with that? No, no, no. I don't think so. Oh, for Oz's sake!
"Oh, stop it, Chistery! Stop fussing! I'm trying to concentrate!"
Damn monkey. He's in my way more and more these days. It's almost as if he's trying to get between me and whatever spell I need to help me find Fiyero. And there must be a spell that can help me do that, I'm sure. I just need the right words...
What's this? Wait, I'm sure I've read this before. Yes, I certainly have. It didn't do anything whatsoever.
Someone is knocking on my door.
"Come in!"
It's Fiera, I know without even bothering to turn and look at her. Since when do my children feel the need to knock?
"What is it?" I ask, still not looking at her.
"Is it true you used to be friends with Glinda the Good?" she steps into the tower room and walks over to me, standing directly in front of me so that I cannot avoid looking at her.
"Yes," I inform her shortly, "a long time ago."
"Why?" she asks, her blue eyes alight with curiosity, "What was she like? Did she really help you when the Wizard was being all evil and all that?"
All evil and all that? When is he not?
"She helped me as much as she could, I suppose," I say grudgingly, flipping pages in the Grimmerie. Perhaps if I re-ordered the words from this spell just so...?
"How did you end up being friends with her?" Fiera wants to know. She lounges against the edge of the table at which I am seated, leaning over so that the ends of her tangled dark hair brush the top of the page I am studying.
"Not now, Fiera. I'm trying to concentrate," I mutter tightly, repeating the words I used with Chistery not ten minutes ago. Will I ever get any peace?
"But Mother," she persists, "you told Nessa all about it!"
It seems that my youngest has inherited my stubbornness as well as her father's refusal to take life seriously and thirst for excitement (well, honestly, the latter I suppose she gets from the both of us).
"If I answer your questions," I bargain, looking up at her, "will you leave me in peace?"
Fiera nods, then jumps backwards as a pair of winged monkeys – neither of them Chistery – swoop low toward her and then veer off to one side, cackling. "Stupid monkeys," she says, but she sounds more amused than annoyed.
"I met Galinda of the Uplands when I was at Shiz University," I start, then stop abruptly. My daughter is looking not at me but at the monkeys circling ahead. "Do you want me to tell this story or not?"
"Oh, you're telling a story?" Fiera perches on the edge of my work table, "go on then!"
"I knew Galinda of the Uplands when I was at Shiz University," I begin again; "we were roommates, which neither of us was very happy about at first. We hated each other for the longest time, but somehow – I don't even really remember the reason now – we ended up becoming friends. Galinda was one of the more popular girls, and though she wasn't as mean as some of them, she was so shallow and superficial that I had little time for her at first. She and I were both in love with Fiyero – your father – and until the day he and I escaped Oz together, I don't believe he ever really chose either of us. Not properly, anyway."
Fiera listens raptly; there is none of her usual fidgeting or staring at the ceiling going on.
"We had to let Glinda believe we were both dead," I continue. This is why I have retold my memories as a story – so that I do not have to relive the pain of them, "She couldn't know the truth, because much as she was dear to me, I did not believe Glinda would keep our secret if she was threatened. And so I haven't seen her for many years now, and she still believes me dead – melted by water."
My younger daughter is staring at me, wearing a look that I cannot quite place. It seems to be the strangest mixture of sadness and excitement and wistfulness – the sort of stare that could belong only to a dreamer. For the first time in a long time, I look back at her – properly look at her, I mean. Her face is angular, fine-boned, like mine, but her eyes are the vibrant blue of her father's. She looks as though she is poised on the very edge of life, waiting to fly.
"Aren't you lonely?" she asks finally, "sitting up here all alone every day."
My breath catches in surprise. Of all the things – this is the last I would have expected her to say! Lonely! It doesn't even occur to me to feel lonely. I have forgotten what loneliness feels like.
"I am too busy to be lonely," I tell her.
Fiera considers this. "Everyone says you're mad," she informs me, "even Nessa and Liir think it. You talk to someone who isn't even there, and you almost never come out of this room to talk to us."
For a moment, I feel the sting of this comment, coming from my own child, but then I brush it aside. The world already thinks me wicked. Let them think me mad, too! I don't care!
"Come downstairs," Fiera pleads, taking a different tack, "come and have dinner with us. You can't spend your whole life sitting up here doing spells!"
Try as I may, I cannot avert my face from hers, "I am trying," I grit out, "to find your father."
"You've been trying for thirteen years," says Fiera, "you have a life, and you're wasting it. Something tells me Fiyero wouldn't want that."
I do not know what makes me do it, but suddenly, I am out of my chair and my hand is whipping through the air. Fiera reels back from the sharp slap I have dealt her, her face blankly bewildered.
"Go," I manage, "just go." I do not want to look at her. I do not want to hear her words swirling around in my mind like a curse.
Without a backward glance, she flees.
