Chapter 10
It had been late when Elphaba had finally arrived home and Avaric was either asleep- or rather passed out, no doubt- or else he was spending the night elsewhere. Elphaba had been disinclined to check for her husband's presence and had simply retreated immediately to the separate bedchamber she had taken to sleeping in after that first, atrocious night.
Elphaba knew that her behaviour had been irrational, and she was sure that she had unintentionally crossed a line in her friendship with Glinda. Raising her voice towards the blonde woman when she uttered some comment that Elphaba disagreed with was one thing; but hysterically screaming whimsical fantasies of love at her was quite another. She had displayed to Glinda a side of herself that she had never intended for anyone to see, and was quite sure that she had done the right thing in leaving. Moreover, Elphaba was certain that Glinda would agree with this prognosis- surely she had plenty of friends who were kind and civil: she didn't need a friend like Elphaba for whom it was such a struggle to control her temper.
As such, the last thing Elphaba had expected to hear the following morning was a carriage pulling up outside the house, and the last thing she had expected to see, when she drew back her drapes curiously, was Glinda stepping out of it.
Frowning, Elphaba glanced over her shoulder, regarding the rest of the still-quiet house. Avaric had not yet emerged from his chamber that morning, but- considering the foul mood he was likely to be in upon discovering her return- Elphaba was very sure that she had no intention of awakening him, if she could help it.
"Elphaba!" Glinda exclaimed, when Elphaba had slipped downstairs moments later and pulled open the front entry. The blonde woman's hand had been poised as though to knock, but instead of lowering it, she scooped Elphaba into a tight embrace. "You're okay! Oh, sweet Oz, you gave me the most dreadful fright!"
Elphaba stared wordlessly down at the woman, her body stiff and tense in the arms she had been thrust into. "Glinda-" she began, frowning, but had not gotten any further with enquiring as to just what was going on before the blonde had squeezed past her and had- grabbing her hand- begun pulling her purposefully towards the sitting room.
Thoroughly confused now, Elphaba closed the door behind and allowed herself to be escorted through.
"Now, let me look at you," Glinda said then, holding her at arms' length and surveying her closely, "Are you hurt? Sick? Why did you take off like that without even requesting use of one of my carriages? You didn't walk all the way back here? Don't you ever do that to me again, do you hear?"
"Glinda," Elphaba began, finally managing to get a word in edgeways, before realising she hadn't any idea how to respond to all that concerned spew. It hadn't occurred to Elphaba that Glinda might have been worried for her: never in her life had somebody cared about her enough to worry for her safety, so it wasn't something she was used to considering. "I'm fine, Glinda" she assured the other woman finally.
"It doesn't matter," Glinda countered immediately, causing Elphaba to raise an eyebrow. "Well, it matters, of course it does, but something could have happened and that's what's important! Didn't you hear me calling out to you as you left?"
Elphaba shrugged guiltily, still trying to digest the fact that Glinda was here at her door after all that had been said the night before.
"Well, I did, I can assure you!" Glinda continued, apparently trying to discharge all of her anger in one go, "I even stepped out into the cold courtyard in search of you, positively ruining a pair of my silk slippers in the process, I might add, and- oh, I'm just so glad you're okay!"
And then she hugging her again, sniffling into her chest in an apparent attempt to keep her emotion in check. Elphaba patted her back weakly, still reeling from the fact that her abrupt disappearance had affected Glinda so much.
She allowed Glinda to embrace her for a further few seconds, before deciding that it was high time they drew attention to matters that had so far been neglected.
"Glinda," Elphaba began doggedly, easing the other woman's body gently but firmly away from hers, "We should talk about last night. When I said all those things-"
But she had got no further than this before Glinda was hushing her. "There's no need to talk about that now," she said, giving a very high, tinkly laugh which caused Elphaba to raise her eyebrows. In her opinion, there was every need to talk about the previous night, much as she was dreading doing so. And she was sure that Glinda knew this too- so why was she feigning such nonchalance about the whole affair?
"Sit down! I've something to show you first," Glinda, who was now ferreting in her bag, was saying, her voice still highly false and chirpy. Elphaba hesitated, undecided whether or not to press the matter, but then Glinda looked up at her. "Sit down," she said again, and the sense of pleading in her eyes was too great for Elphaba to ignore. She sank onto a seat, but the very second her bony behind had touched the cushioned material, Glinda had risen to her feet and was brandishing a sleek wooden box in her face.
"What's this?" she asked, trying to draw her head back from the object enough that she could actually see what it was.
"Open it up and see!" Glinda beamed, bobbing excitedly on the balls of her feet.
Elphaba sighed, hoping it wasn't anything like Glinda's previous surprise, which had unfathomably managed to reduce her to tears for the first time in twenty-or-so years, and then opened the box and peered into it. Inside, amongst thick, velvet padding, nestled a slim, wooden stick.
"Well?" Glinda demanded, impatient through her enthusiasm, "What do you think?"
Elphaba shook her head blankly. "What is it?"
"It's a magick wand!" Positively brimming with excitement now, Glinda took the box back and drew out the wand as carefully as one might lift a hand grenade. "I'm going to teach you sorcery!"
Oh, sweet Oz, Elphaba thought, as the image of the two of them unintentionally setting the house aflame entered her mind unbidden. "That's a very kind thought, but highly unnecessary," she told Glinda as tactfully as she could manage.
"Oh, but I insist," Glinda replied, smiling sweetly. Elphaba sighed, then- against her better judgement- relented, unable to ignore the sneaking suspicion that she would willingly walk to the edge of Oz for that smile.
Glinda's sorcery lesson, initially, seemed to comprise of the blonde witch saying funny words while waving the wand around wildly- and then growing frustrated as nothing happened. After this sequence had transpired for the fifth time, Elphaba could feel her previous amusement rapidly turning to a mild impatience, and after the sixth time, she had come to the definite conclusion that Glinda had been speaking the truth when she had stated that she was "not the most accomplished sorceress."
"May I try?" she asked finally. While still not wholly enthusiastic about this magick tutorial, Elphaba could not deny that it was frustrating to watch somebody fail at something over and over and not have the opportunity to set her own hand to the task.
"Oh, I suppose," Glinda told her, grudgingly handing the wand over, "I'm sure I don't understand what's wrong: that spell worked perfectly fine for me before I arrived. Perhaps it's broken- can wands break? Or maybe this house simply doesn't have the right atmosphere-"
She continued to talk, blaming her failure on every external source from the plausible to the ridiculous; from the current weather conditions to the colour of the walls, but Elphaba was no longer concentrating. The second she had taken the wand from Glinda, an extraordinary sensation had come over her- a tingling which had started at her fingertips and then risen swiftly to enthral the rest of her body. Even her mind seemed consumed, in part, by the wonder of the wand; a feeling which Elphaba disliked intensely- it was a frightening thought that she might not have full control over her own mind.
As she instinctively- as though she, through some unfathomable means, knew precisely what she was doing- raised the wooden stick far above her head, Elphaba felt her body begin to tremble and found that her lips were forming words in a language she had never before encountered. Glinda was no longer talking: she simply watched in rapture, eyes wildly anticipant as she waited to see what Elphaba would do.
There was a flash of blinding, green light and Elphaba froze with one arm held above her head. She gave the hand gripping the wand an involuntary jerk, and the light appeared again. This time, however, it remained present, and began to snake around the room, confident and ominous, like toxic gas diffusing into the air they breathed.
Paralysed with surprise that she had actually achieved something, Elphaba could only watch as the spell meandered lazily above their heads as though casually deciding its direction. And then, choosing its purpose, it moved decisively towards the stag's head which was nailed to a board and positioned on the East wall. It was an ugly thing of Avaric's and Elphaba had always detested it, feeling for the poor creature which had lost its life for the sake of a wall ornament. But as the spell encapsulated it, the long-dead animal was given new life. It turned to peer at Elphaba through doleful, hazel eyes; and then rose entirely from the wall, growing, as it did so, a whole new body of silvery green vapour. It dropped majestically to the floor, staggered a little as though unused to its magickal body, and then kicked up its back legs and began to sprint, heading deliberately for the unopened windows which opened onto the back patio.
Elphaba heard Glinda gasp, heard her utter several exclamations to the Unnamed God,Lurline and The Wizard; but her attention was fixated on the incongruous being of her own creation as it bounded across the room, increasing in speed as it went. It hit the windows with such impact that they shattered completely, causing glass to shower down onto the carpet. But- apparently unscathed- the magickal stag simply continued on through the gardens as though the barrier between the sitting room and freedom had never existed.
It was not until it had disappeared from sight that Elphaba realised that the windows- which she had just witnessed being broken into pieces- were once again whole. She blinked several times, trying to comprehend the logic of the matter; but there was no rational explanation to be found.
There was silence in the room as both women stood stunned, slowly recovering from the effects of the unexpected magick. Elphaba strained to hear whether the commotion her spell had caused had produced any disturbance from upstairs; but, miraculously, the house remained silence. Finally, Glinda moved her eyes from the empty wooden board which had once been host to a stag's head, and turned to look at the perpetrator of the spell, her eyes large with astonishment and envy.
"Well," she said, pouting, "That's no fun. You didn't tell me you already knew magick."
"I don't." Elphaba's breathing was still heavy, her heart gradually slowing from the swift beats it had taken up; still reeling from what she had done. "I've never cast that spell before in my life. I've never cast any spell previous to that."
Glinda was looking at her with scrutiny, as though to deduct whether or not she was being truthful. Finally, seeming to decide that she believed the other woman, she drew in a breath of air and shook her head in wonder.
She wouldn't have believed it of anyone else. If anybody else Glinda knew had cast a spell of that power and had then claimed to know nothing of sorcery, she would have rejected the claim without a thought. There was absolutely no way in which a person could cause that to happen upon attempting sorcery for the first time- and with this thought, Glinda vividly recalled her own first time, in which no spell she cast had had any visible effect whatsoever. It had only been through perseverance and sheer stubbornness that she had finally managed to become adept at casting simple spells. But this had only been the first rung of the ladder, and now she was perhaps on the second or third- and what loomed ahead of her promised to be a long, arduous climb. And yet now, she felt that from her lowly position she was staring up at Elphaba who was already miles and miles above her.
It simply wasn't fair; and Glinda couldn't help feeling a little silly now for having offered to teach Elphaba sorcery in the first place, when really it looked as though the green woman should be teaching her. But Glinda could not find it in herself to resent Elphaba for what she had achieved.
"Oh, this is so exciting!" she gushed at last, "Do something else, Elphie! I want to watch more carefully and take notice of exactly what happens."
Glinda watched Elphaba shift her gaze to the wand still gripped in her hand, saw the way her face contracted into a frown. Then, finally, the green woman shook her head and placed the wand firmly in front of Glinda.
"No," she said.
"No?" Glinda stared at her as though she had gone insane, which, she felt at that moment, may just have happened. "What in Oz do you mean, no?"
"Exactly what I said," Elphaba told her firmly, "I'm not going to do any more magick."
"But why ever not?" Glinda spluttered, "Elphie, you're a talented sorceress! Surely you aren't going to attempt to ignore something like that!"
But it seemed as though Elphaba was set on doing so: no matter how hard Glinda tried to convince her, she would not sway from her decision. And neither could Glinda work out why Elphaba was refusing to use her magick powers. All that she would say, when quizzed, was that she did not want magickal solutions to her problems, because that was not the way the world worked. Even when Glinda hinted that Elphaba could help the Animals she so loved with use of sorcery, Elphaba only maintained that she would continue to work hard at what she fully understand, rather than becoming dependant on something which was illogical, required no effort and had simply arisen out of the blue. All of which sounded positively ridiculous to Glinda. Working to succeed was all fine and good, but she just couldn't understand how one could simply dismiss a talent which came so naturally to her.
Finally, after much passionate debate, it seemed clear that neither woman could accept nor understand the other's point of view with regards to this particular issue; and Glinda had to confess defeat for the time being, though she did not intend to give up completely. Never before had Glinda met somebody who was quite so stubborn as herself, but it seemed that Elphaba far surpassed her in this department- in quite the same way she did when it came to magickal ability.
It was not until she left the house somewhat later that Glinda remembered just what her purpose had been in going over there- she had intended to distract them both from the occurrences of the previous night. And she had succeeded in this aim with surprising ease. Almost from the instant she had walked in, Glinda had quite forgotten any discomfort between the two of them. She was sure that this was because being in Elphaba's company felt so natural and straightforward that no room was left for awkwardness. Which was rather surprising, Glinda contemplated, as Elphaba was certainly not the easiest person to get along with. Rather, it seemed that the two of them shared an inexplicable connection- something which exceeded the usual friendship between two women- which caused Glinda to feel continuously relaxed in the other woman's presence.
What is this feeling?- Glinda wondered in bewilderment, as an incongruously warm shiver coursed through her body, seeming to warm her to the very tips of her fingers and toes. Who are you, Elphaba? Why are you so unlike everybody else I've ever met in my life? And why do you possess such extraordinary power, both magickally and over me?