A/N: Let me just say that this one was a struggle. I had a weird set of parameters for this story, and one of them was that I wasn't going to use any line breaks; every time jump and memory had to flow organically from whatever came before it, stream-of-consciousness style. And we're dealing with multiple flashbacks here, so it took me weeks to map out the relationship between Mel's past, present, and future, and the transitions between them. The whole thing ended up requiring about two months of work. But I'm very happy with how it turned out. And I think it's pretty neat that it matches up with the 'stages of grief' model.

You know...denial, anger, bargaining, depression, vengeance...


12. Dirt

Melena digs.

She digs because it is all she can do. She digs as if it matters. She thrusts the head of the shovel into the dirt and ignores the way her protesting muscles bunch and convulse when she jerks it upwards. A blister bubbles between her thumb and forefinger, burning with an intensity that is half an itch and half a sting, but she spares no heed for this either. The pit is almost to her knees.

It can't be real. This notion, this grave – it can't be real, but it is. The wind whips at her skirts, flicking handfuls of dust into her face, and Melena is her own worst nightmare as she flinches and blinks and lets out something that is not quite a sob. She rallies when she can and drives the shovel into a stubborn clump. It doesn't pierce the surface and she stomps the spade in with the flat of her foot, gritting her teeth as the toll of exertion sears through her body. There is a clammy dampness where sweat has soaked into her clothes, pooling under her arms and trickling parallel to her spine. But the sunless chill creeps along her legs and into her joints. She will be ill by morning, and Holly will send for the doctor again. He will take Melena's pulse and brew another sleeping draught and say, "I've yet to find anything wrong."

You've yet to find anything wrong, you dolt, Melena will want to say, because everything is wrong, but she will only look trustingly into his bearded face and nod as if she values his expertise. He will smile through his pity, then leave, and she will stare at the ceiling and berate herself for letting him off so easily. She packs so much in; soon her skull will reach capacity and burst.

The rough rasp of metal cleaving the earth. The thump of displaced grains landing behind her. Melena embeds the shovel in the hollow where the slope of the pit is becoming more pronounced and thinks of the day she commissioned the gravestones from the mason.

"Shouldn't they be in order?" he asked, fussing over the plan she'd drawn.

She simply said, "No, I'd like it this way," and did not tell him that she was determined to have Nessa's stone on the plot reserved for the wife, because she could not bring herself to leave Nessa unprotected on one side, but required Elphaba to be as far from Frex as possible. Nor did she tell him that she knew it was absurd to refer to the girls this way, as if Dorothy left the luxury of corpses, or that the porter had brought her the post that morning and she'd thought maybe this is word from Nessa without thinking. It had merely been her father's lawyer confirming that the estate was now under her name – a forgettable matter, and yet the slip would plague her for days.

Sometimes I am afraid of myself, she wanted to tell the mason, but she only thanked him for his time and exited the shop.

Since then, Melena has ascended precisely zero notches on the scale of recovery – or so she believes. She digs and digs and it is like she is gouging into herself, exorcising more than there is to exorcise, and continuing in it until she draws the lantern closer and glances at the engravings on the first stone: two linked dates and a name carved in blockish script above them. She makes it out through the shadows and the world is utterly still, just for a moment, despite the thin cascades of dirt slipping down the sides of the pit.

It is deep enough, she decides, and so she clambers out and retrieves the bundle of letters that once resided in the first drawer of her writing desk. As she tips them in, she catches snippets – or maybe absorbs them through her fingers: Who let me believe that 'Introduction to Philosophy' was a good idea? I'm still not sure what Elphaba is hoping to accomplish. He's been such a pillar of strength. If I'm to live in these conditions interminably.

Melena has no words to say. She does not mull any memories. She drops the packets into the burial plot that was to be her own and regards the pale heap they form at the bottom – some are still in slit envelopes, some are loose pages folded over themselves – and then she curls her sore palms around the shovel again. The moon slides through the sky and the clouds shift and she tells herself that it will be easier the second time, but it never is.

"Good news from the Vinkus, Your Ladyship," he said.

Was it Mayor Timsette of Wend Hardings? Or that insipid minister of agriculture – the one who always slurped his tea too loudly? Or Bfee himself? Melena can't dredge a face from her mind and fasten it to the memory, even with the distinctiveness of their voices and years of exposure to them. She only recalls being summoned to the study and hearing those words and throwing everything she had against the brittleness that stole into her bones. It pried at her resolve with icy fingers and worked to drag her down from the knees, but she clenched her fists and did not crumple, because she'd known. From the day Elphaba based herself in the Vinkus, in Kiamo Ko, with no more than a troop of winged monkeys for protection, she'd known.

It hadn't been easy – steeling herself, that is. For weeks, Melena was stationed in the library with the paper in her hands and the world coming down in chunks around her. She was prepared – or she tried to be. But she wasn't. She retired into the darkness of dread and woke in the embrace of expectation and still it was a shock as it happened. The Wizard had won. He'd installed one of his puppets at the helm of Munchkinland and rid himself of a faulty ally, and the Prince of the Vinkus at that, and Elphaba played into her role perfectly, exposing herself with the brazenness of a villain who had nothing to lose.

And Dorothy. The champion of the public. The darling of the press. Melena closed her eyes to ward off the daggers concealed in the endless coverage of the mission, only to succumb to the next temptation and find that the runt had made it further along the map. Fear kept the Vinkun tribesmen at bay, but their reports flooded in, augmenting the speculation that emanated from the Emerald City: Glinda the Good was poised on the western border, seeing off Dorothy and her companions. Dorothy was camping on the dead shore of Kellswater. If all was well, she'd be crossing through Kumbricia's Pass right now. She was being hosted by the generous people of Nether How – not two days' travelling distance from the fortress of Kiamo Ko.

Time raced at a crawl and the suspension was almost too much to bear. Years of having been strung up by the tautest nerves, of fear and strain and worst-case scenarios, all condensed into mere weeks as Melena sat in paralysis and listened to the popping of the last few seams that held her together. She imagined her daughter on the ramparts, glimpsing doom in every silhouette, maybe even welcoming it, or skulking through the Grasslands in some ill-fated bid at an advantage. She imagined herself in the aftermath of what was coming and writhed in the strip of moonlight that fell across her bed and thought: I can't do this again.

She imagined that there was hope and laughed every time. Even in the agonizing interlude when Dorothy vanished into the depths of Kiamo Ko without a trace, without abject violence, and there might have been.

"Good news from the Vinkus, Your Ladyship."

Melena stood in the doorway of the governor's study and heard these words and the last seam popped loudly in her ears. Just like that, she was untethered. No longer of this world. She stood on the stark plain of her secret and screamed and remained silent all the while. I can't breathe, I can't breathe, she thought, truly believing that her heart would forfeit and the end would close around her right then. She couldn't endure it – not this time. It was too much. Too much. She was taking too much water into her lungs. Gasping. Make it stop. Don't make me do it again. I can't do it again. There was nothing left, nothing, and yet a voice stabbed into her and inspired so much pain that it must have been life.

"We ought to invite Dorothy back to Munchkinland after she's had her audience," Bfee said. "She was ours first, wasn't she? Oz should be reminded of that."

There was a tremulous moment and then a solitary murmur, which begot the same in another man, then another, and spread until the room was thrumming unanimously. A few glasses chimed as they were drunkenly smashed into each other. Laughter shot up, soaring above the din, and draped over every grinning head and unoccupied gap, enfolding Melena like an unwanted embrace. She blinked and registered Bfee's proposition and the moment pulsed before her and rushed back in: too many people packed within the walls, and all in various states of celebration. Drinking. Jesting. Handing off their coats to the staff and easing themselves into the armchairs.

"You will do no such thing," she said.

Instantly, the chasm opened between Melena and the officials, and all the joy drained out of the study. "Whatever your feelings were towards Nessarose, I urge you to remember her father, and all the good he did by you and your domains," she said. "His legacy is worthy of your respect, at the very least, and you ought to honour it by keeping Dorothy from his family home."

Her words siphoned the last of the mirth from the room, lingering in the thickening air, and the surprise veered into guilt on their contorted faces. They gaped and were too still or too fidgety, like criminals, like children, astounded by the audacity of the woman who'd once sat demurely in the parlour and rattled off idle questions about their occupations. They looked at her, blankly, and seemed to be realizing for the first time that she had stood behind Frex all those years, or that they had cheered on her daughter's demise, or maybe that she was still in existence.

"Munchkinland will never have a more reliable governor."

"I remember the time…"

"…and sent it from his own stores…"

"It was remarkable, wasn't it?"

"A grievous loss."

At first, Melena didn't realize that they were agreeing with her. She listened dully to their remarks until they took on meaning, and then she was flummoxed by their fickleness, even as she struggled to keep up. For the briefest interval, they directed the acknowledgement her way, but Frex's ghost was quickly clawed from her grasp and drawn into their private circle, leaving her on the lonely plain again. She watched them, as if through a veil, and didn't have it in her to be angry – not yet. She simply waited until the prospect of Dorothy's visit was no longer being bandied about, and then she left.

She hurled herself into the corridor, whirling one way then the other, and nearly collided with Holly, who opened her mouth to impart something that emerged as a squeak and then died on her lips. The maid looked a little eager and a little apologetic, no doubt having listened in on the scene, but she perceived Melena's disorientation and took her arm before saying, "You shocked them, ma'am."

Melena laughed hollowly. "I expect that was the first time they heard me say something that wasn't to the effect of 'does your drink need freshening up?'"

"They're awful," Holly said.

"Nothing out of the ordinary."

From the corner of her eye, Melena saw Holly's face twist in sympathy. "You must see her everywhere you look."

The words were shears through Melena's composure, and she almost said I do, I do, but it occurred to her that Holly was referring to Nessa and she couldn't bring herself to think about both girls at once. A shudder rolled through her and she became uncomfortably aware of her own vulnerability – if something didn't batter one side of her heart, it was bound to pierce the other.

"I think you ought to be the governor, ma'am."

Melena breathed shakily, as if she could hardly do it, and said, "That's sweet, dear, but I can hardly stand to be ma'am right now. Would you see me to my chambers?"

Eventually, they closed in on their wing of the manor and Holly guided Melena to her bed, because Melena could not make it herself. She didn't feel right in her body; it didn't fit. It was limiting, and she was reeling somewhere beyond tangibility. She had – and still has – the impression of having been on the wrong end of a deception. Somewhere along the line someone lied to her, made her believe it was a trade: this for that, one for the other, but she stands here, on the brink of the second grave, and all she has are the yellowing pages of old newspaper clippings.

She doesn't look as she heaves them in; she's only conscious of the exchange that occurs. Her fingertips are coated in ink and the paper is stained with blood – a product of the arduous digging, which she now sees was entirely necessary. The newspapers occupy far more space than the letters. There are full issues, owing their preservation to the once-popular trend of implicating the Wicked Witch of the West in every minor mishap and gross calamity. There are relics from a decade ago, torn raggedly around awkward photographs and overly zealous captions. There is a note that says: Thank you. Really.

There are so many memories, so many worries, and they all make their ungainly way into the pit.

"My husband was too stricken, and I was unable to mourn her," Melena said of her stillborn baby. The mason hastily offered his condolences and apologized for inquiring about the purpose of the second stone. It's rather basic – the exact size and shape of Nessa's – and the engraving is a single date. Melena topples the last of the clippings over the edge and leans on the cool granite until her breath returns. She is too hot, too winded, and chagrined by how much there remains to do, but intent on doing it anyway, so she wraps her shawl around the shaft of the shovel and hefts one load of dirt at a time.

Even when it's the truth it's just more lies, she thinks. She recalls the doctor feeling her forehead for a temperature and saying, "Forgetting is the best medicine."

It was his second visit. Earlier that day, Holly had come in to make the bed and found Melena fixated on the knife from her breakfast tray. "I wasn't thinking," Melena protested – and she hadn't been – but Holly requested the doctor's insight anyway.

He felt Melena's forehead for a temperature and said, "Forgetting is the best medicine," with unchallenged confidence and left her a sleeping draught that she downed in one go. Melena does not forget how the chalky mixture slid over her tongue and left a residue in her throat that was still there when she woke. Nor does she forget looking into his smiling eyes and remembering what he'd told her twenty years prior. He was thinner then and his hair was less grey. She wanted to nurse her child and he said, "You could damage the baby," but he meant, "You could damage the baby more."

No one ever told Frex he could damage the baby. Melena does not forget this.

Fiyero, she later learned, was pronounced most sincerely dead just before Elphaba took up residence in Kiamo Ko – executed for defection and other vague reasons. Melena does not forget doing the calculation on her fingers: Elphaba had two nights with him. Life gives you things just to take them away. Nessa and Fiyero. Within days of each other. Melena wishes she could forget this. She wishes she could forget saying, "Maybe so, but it has an odd way of continuing to give," as if that meant something.

She wishes she could forget the circumstances of Elphaba's death.

Melted.

Dorothy melted her.

Melena heard this tale via the chatter that permeated the walls and doors of Colwen Grounds and her first objective was to infer the truth. For all her attempts at intimidation, Elphaba would not have had it in her to kill a little girl, and this must have granted Dorothy a window. But for what? A knife? A bullet? A spell? Melena groped every shape she could make out through the eternal night and no one would oblige her with a lantern. She roamed for a short stretch and then turned back, reluctantly, because she was alone, utterly alone, and she could not bear to confront whatever was lurking in the shadows. She clung to her daily routines and tried to outrun the despondency. It snapped at her heels, threatening to drag her away, but she refused to give in.

She succeeded in this, and she did not.

This time, Melena could hardly figure out how to combat the grief, because she could hardly figure out if she would wake up in such a state. There were days when she wandered the halls as if parts of her had been hacked away with a dull machete, as if she was missing whole chunks, and days when she felt she was capable of establishing a new outlook on the expanse of empty time ahead. I will live honestly, she told herself, temporarily forgetting the seismic effort it took just to live, searching for beauty in the small things, but never holding to the practice for long. It wasn't sustainable; it wore her out. For all the beauty in the small things, the streets still rang with festivities.

Melena ducked and swerved and retreated into herself and none of it was effective. She no longer read the newspapers, but the headlines sought her anyway, and each one settled in the pit of her stomach like a stone, weighing heavier and heavier. She was in exile. She hauled herself out of bed and looked at the eggs on her plate and seemed to be thinking: This could use more salt. She was really thinking: I gave her up. I gave her up, and now she is dead. I promised her I'd care for Nessa and I didn't even do that much. Was the book enough? Did she know?

An abyss – it felt like an abyss, and she on the cusp, so close that her toes were wriggling in the dead air. Melena trained her eyes into the indefinite depths and discerned nothing: no answers and no soul with whom she could share her qualms. She thought, fleetingly, of a solution that could alleviate the pain of banishment, but did not entertain it beyond the span of a day, acceding in the wounded reaches of her heart that there was no recourse to be found in the Emerald City.

Perhaps the father in him exists after all, she thought hatefully, for Morrible busied herself putting out innumerable pronouncements and his name was not attached to a single one. Glinda oversaw Dorothy's departure, sending her home with shoes that neither of them had any right to, and took to touring the major towns of Gillikin so as to affirm her relevance in the outer provinces. The Scarecrow begged off, but the Tin Man and the Lion indulged heartily in their newfound fame, and there seemed to be mass amnesia both within the palace and without. The affiliation between the Wicked Witch of the West and their beloved leader did nothing to curb the peoples' jubilance, and the jubilance did nothing to spur him to action. He was more absent than ever.

Melena endured the silence until she couldn't and then relinquished the last of her hope and did not know what to do with herself. Days became interminable, dawning and crumbling away like eras, flattening her hard-won strength into lassitude; a weariness of life that shrunk the world to the perimeter of her room and imprisoned her there. She burrowed under too many blankets and resented every noise that met her ears, for even in a place of safety she was constantly assaulted by the fact of other lives rushing on. They were like battering rams against the base of her skull, splintering whatever remained of her sanity, and so real that the concept of peace became synonymous to oblivion.

"I could've sworn she was improving," Holly said.

The doctor's voice resounded through the door. "Ordinarily I'd prescribe some kind of retreat – a visit to family, perhaps, but I suppose she has no family."

"She has me."

Even through the fog of semi-delirium, Melena was touched by this devotion. She submitted to the doctor's futile palpitations, for Holly's sake, and later feigned a smile when Holly brought her dinner and sat at the vanity, but it hardly made a difference. She felt low, so low, and so invisible, so she requested three vials of the sleeping draught and drained them in succession, falling into and out of herself as if into a novel that she lived for a time and then set aside.

She dreamt of Nessa. She dreamt of Elphaba. She dreamt of Frex, of milkflowers, of the thin line between existing and not. She dreamt of herself in a green palace with a fraud for a husband, of elixir, of his skin all over hers and two or three more. She dreamt of her youth in Dead Tree Heights, of her parents, of the smell of rising bread and roses in the gardens.

"I think you're—"

"You're too sentimental for your own good, Melena."

"History is begging to be written."

"We're all mad here."

She dreamt of the future, and it was darkness.

The moon sheds a radiant halo that catches the three, four, five stars dotting the sky above her, glinting like eyes. Melena leans on the shovel and looks into this light and thinks of that darkness and for half a terrifying moment it is the latter she sees. It is stasis. It is a trap. It's like sprinting. For miles. Forever. But Melena is tired of running, and she is tired of endings and longings and feeling like a distant onlooker in her own life. She concentrates on the tactile knowledge of the wood against the ravaged skin of her hands and plants firm feet in the loam beneath her. Bury the blade in the mound of dirt and tip it in. Do it again. Breathe. When you look up at the sky, the stars are still there.

Beauty in the small things, she thinks perfunctorily, recollecting the hours she spent with her tutor and his telescope in the musty attic of her childhood home. He named constellations and bade her to record their positions and spoke of the hundreds of years it takes for cosmic entities to move a discernible degree.

"My oldest friends," he called them.

Even at the age of eleven, Melena felt dubious. She pressed her face to the lens and made no reply, watching the stars, shrinking back as they watched her, and thinking it a cold and impersonal interaction.

But they do sparkle prettily, don't they?

Melena grips the shovel and she sees the stark figures of the little girl and the Rhinoceros in her mind's eye and she tries not to imagine where Master Lenx is now, for she's certain the stars did little better by him than they did by Reginalf Pantherin or Doctor Dillamond or Elphaba—

Beauty in the small things.

Sometimes Melena would like to start screaming and never stop.

In this way, the dreams cured her of all lethargy and did nothing to cure her of herself. She stirred and tore free of the web, strand by strand, and when she burst into consciousness, scattered and febrile, she was not expecting it to be as late into the evening as it was. Her eyes fluttered, adjusting, and she tilted her gaze towards the sliver of sky that fell through the drapes, realizing that the self-imposed darkness had broken down and she could see stars. She slid from her bed and felt the floorboards wince and groan under her feet. She touched the white hem of her nightgown and the knobs on the bedpost. She undid the latch and forced the window open and it was as if the world was hers for the taking.

When the sun hit its pinnacle and the door swung on its hinges, Melena spun to greet Holly, smiling, and assisted in clearing the debris from the tray that clattered to the floor. She complained of a distracting tightness in her legs and stretched them by traversing the halls, then the grounds, then the path to the rotting frame of Dorothy's house. Eventually, she complied with another medical examination – at Holly's behest – and nodded along to the doctor's stern litany of warnings.

"You're fortunate to be alive," he told her.

Melena laughed, as if joyous, and saw him to his carriage. The next day, she proposed that Holly dredge up walking boots and accompany her into town, for the unbearable tension was still locked around her limbs and she yearned to divert herself with the noise and motion of outside forces. Holly, of course, was an easy sell on the matter, and so they were not long in unbolting the gate and turning directly onto the path that joined Colwen Grounds to its neighbouring hamlet.

Each step was capped with an identical one, drawing them further and further from the blurring form of the manor, and Melena supplied lazy observations about the mildness of the weather in order to quench her misgivings. She was matched platitude for platitude by Holly, lapse for lapse, and given just enough space to restore herself to the world in fractions. At first, it was the gravel skidding underfoot, then the breeze sifting through her hair and the sunlight that spread itself over her skin, and then they crested the hill and stared down the fork in the road and it was the anxiety on Holly's face.

"I'll be fine," Melena assured her, infusing more confidence into the claim than honesty warranted, so Holly conceded and deviated towards the market with her usual list of errands. Melena, for her part, meandered the main streets alone and realized just how thick the partition was between herself and the Munchkins. She nodded at those she passed and registered at the library, and it was as if she was miming and shouting her intentions from the opposite side of a transparent wall – and one with an entirely separate history, at that. It was too thick to penetrate, and yet she insisted on rushing it headlong, over and over, as if it would vanish in the brief span between attempts.

She browsed the specialty shops and conversed with the vendors by their carts and promptly discovered that repetition did nothing to ease these interactions, and continued to do nothing, even as she purchased a bouquet of lilies that she did not like and a pastry that she had no desire to eat. She simply juggled the packages in her arms, as if they had a purpose, as if she had a purpose, and continued down the road. When she happened by the newsstand, she dallied and inhaled deeply and picked up the Munchkin Mirror – and she was floored.

The Wizard of Oz was gone.

He was in the Badlands, or in Kansas, or somewhere nearby – or perhaps dead – and Glinda the Good had assumed his position. Madame Morrible had been imprisoned on charges of corruption and murder. Every day, new policies were being unveiled to repeal, to reintegrate, to recompense, and things were changing rapidly.

Making Some Wrong Things Right(s), read the headline.

"It's about time, isn't it?"

Melena was jolted out of her daze by the unfamiliar voice. She affected a smile, though it felt like a grimace, and reluctantly met the over-exuberant eyes of the stand's proprietor as he came towards her.

"It's only been a few days, but you can already feel a transformation in the air, can't you?" he said.

"I suppose," Melena said.

"Glinda's our best bet, I'd say."

"Oh – yes."

He tapped the crease in the paper that she was still holding before her midriff, sending a current through the flimsy pages and coursing down her unsteady wrists. "There was always something off about that family – something unnatural," he said. "We should have known from the time it came out that the girl was green."

"I suppose," Melena said.

"And for a man to condemn his own daughter? Wicked or not, I could never do that to my little Lianne."

Melena's fingers twitched as she folded the newspaper in on itself and thought he's gone and had no idea what tone she thought it in. It was like casting off her cruelest demon and oldest friend in one shrug, and she did not know how to cope as her stomach swooped and she went spiralling through the emptiness. She excused herself on the pretense of a headache and made as if to pay for the issue, but the man waved her away and told her there was no need – it was all in the name of goodness.

The mist curled around her as she stumbled to the fountain at the centre of the square and lowered herself onto the ledge. She tried to pretend that she was glad to be rid of him, that she wasn't feeling anything other than triumph, but she peered wistfully down the lane as if to pinpoint the corner where she'd caught his eye and he'd grinned back at her and she'd unwittingly granted him permission to mine out her heart while it was still beating in her chest. He'd done so, with relish, and then he stranded her with the burden of the past and she despised him for it, but she felt so terribly alone that she would have cleaved to anything.

He's gone, she thought.

She fixed her eyes on the photograph of Glinda that was embedded in the article on the front page. She could not exactly tell what it was that she was dwelling on – there was too much pounding through her mind and yet it was a blank slate – but she stared until her vision flashed and a strange intensity took hold of her, then she stuffed the paper into her bag and shifted her attention to the rowdy group of children chasing each other over the cobblestones.

"Witch!"

"I'll get you, Dorothy!"

The boy weaved through clusters of people and a maze of carts and circled back to the fountain. He curved his hand into a near-fist and submerged it in the pool, waiting, and when the girl on his trail was within range, he raised his weapon and splattered the front of her dress. She let out a shriek and flailed her arms as she slumped to the ground, then squirmed and giggled as he christened her with the excess water trickling from his fingers. Wayward drops caught Melena's skirt and she flinched, but did not turn away, staying rapt until their minder emerged from the bakery.

After the woman berated the children and sent them scampering towards their schoolroom, she turned to Melena and offered a look of solidarity but not of recognition. "You know how children are – everything's a game to them," she said. "They don't know where we'd be without Dorothy."

Melena hefted another wan smile from the weary depths of her soul and then ducked her face to conceal the expression that followed and saw her reflection in the rippling pool below the ledge. She lost herself there until the woman was gone and when she glanced up, she was confronted with the shadowy splotches where water had sizzled against the road. She couldn't concentrate on anything past them, so she quickly leapt to her feet and toured the rest of town.

She paid a visit to the chapel and lit a candle before the fresco of Saint Glinda, for it was always Nessa's favourite. She shaded her eyes against the glare and read the sign in the mason's window. Finally, she ambled by the coffeehouse, listening intently, and it was her first brush with Munchkinland's discontent:

"Say what you'd like about Nessarose; she was darling as a child. Just darling. The trouble didn't begin until they sent that girl to Gillikin."

"Remember the sessions that Governor Frexspar used to hold in the courthouse? For the people to petition? It's a rare thing, to be listened to by your governor."

"I've been saying it for years. Haven't I been saying it for years? It was no Wizard that kept us fed, and it was no Ozma neither. It was the Thropps."

Their grumbling was casual and well-practiced, as if they'd been doing it for a decade, though Bfee had been occupying the Thropp seat for a matter of months. Melena went slinking past every gathering that she came across, eavesdropping, and it was the first she heard of the governor's exploits. He'd taken advantage of Glinda's policies to promote the proliferation of Animal labour – at unfair wages, naturally – and enacted a new land tax that struck the poorer regions of Munchkinland with unrestrained savagery. Moreover, the rains had not been enough to yield sufficient crops in Appleton, his own county, and he'd reportedly said, "They'll just have to make do without."

Bloody Bfee is running Munchkinland into the ground, Melena thought.

She roamed up the length of the road twice more, ruminating, and then settled on the edge of the ravine, at the designated meeting place, and waited for Holly to return. By the time she spotted the slight figure closing the distance between herself and the low roofs of the town beyond, Melena was almost too depleted to stand. She felt hunted and bruised – as though the whole population had contrived to put her through a mill several times over and then wring her out like a rag. Conversation was not within her limits, so she posed a few questions and sent Holly slanting into an account of her three younger sisters, of her ramshackle home in Wend Hardings, of her father's death three years previous and the pride she took in supporting her family, and also of the relief she'd felt upon escaping their grief and self-pity.

"You have to get out," Holly said. "The important thing is to get out."

"Thank you," Melena said suddenly.

She took hold of Holly's arm to curb her and looked earnestly into her face. "Whatever there is to come, I truly appreciate the care that you have provided me over the past months."

Since then, Melena has been pushing herself into town every day. At first, she was gracious and charming, letting on to nothing more personal than a fondness for sunshine and long walks, and she bided her time, careful not to conduct herself in a manner that intimated the presence of a motive. She earned the trust of the townsfolk and they came to identify her by her route through the square, if not by her face, and then by her name when she devised the plan for the gravestones and revealed it to the mason.

Within twenty minutes of her doing so, the information circulated and the stares commenced, plastering over her pores and driving inward like tacks. Some eyes went soft and others went steely and they grated equally, but Melena endured the discomfort and the sleepless nights and the friction, smiling and nodding, and soon enough her skin started to get thicker. Ultimately, they are healing exercises, these ventures, only their aim is not to close the wounds and provide a means of scabbing over – they gouge in and widen the gaps until the gaps are beyond mending, and she feels no remorse as she applies the pressure that feeds the fire searing up her nerves.

Because the truth of it is that she loathes the Munchkins.

She loathes the feckless children for their ignorance, for their susceptibility, and she loathes the feckless parents who insist upon steeping them in such virulent nonsense. There is the man who praises Glinda when she stops by for the Munchkin Mirror, and there are the voices carrying from the coffeehouse, venting opinions that have been falsely bent around the idea that Nessa was darling and Frex was reliable. Melena hears their complaints and she witnesses their lives and she takes in all of the rights that could not be stripped from them: they whelp their children and they hold them; sometimes they bury them and then they mourn them and no one ever says, "They don't know where we'd be without Dorothy."

At the end of the day, Melena returns from her trips and hugs her knees to her chest, grinding herself further and further into this private hell. She feels the tendrils of a new anger tickling the back of her mind and lets them swirl through her body, finding that she is able to sustain these bouts for longer than she could before, for they are smoother, more constant. They sit in her gut not as a stone but as an ember, growing hotter and hotter, fueling her, and she nurses the tiny flame until she can harvest its energy. Why not? For the entirety of her life thus far, she's slumped down wherever she's been directed to and she's played along, wrapping herself in so many layers of nothing that it began to feel like something – and now it is all bare and she is nothing again, the dreaded nothing, and she is free.

She fills her days by pacing, incessantly. She keeps tabs on Bfee and his guests via Holly. When he pulls up the drive in a sporty new carriage, or when he cracks his fat knuckles and exposes the rings that seem to have materialized there, she documents it in a ledger alongside the figures that tally the meagre funds he's expended on the betterment of the state.

She is calculating because she does not have the will to be anything more effusive.

She digs.

Over the course of the night, she slips in and out of her skin, carving two pits in the earth and filling them, and by dawn there are only swaths of meticulously paved dirt where she's buried the last of her daughters.

After the shovel is replaced in the toolshed, Melena drops onto her bed and does not stir until she is roused the next morning. She calls out that she is not decent, that she will take her breakfast in the dining room, and then she regards herself in the mirror and laughs. Mud coats her forehead, bound to dried sweat and a smear of blood that angles into her hairline, and fatigue slices into her bones with every step towards the wash basin. Her hands are like gristle and there is no fingernail that hasn't been cracked into an uneven ridge. She brings them before her and sluices the grime from her face and then rubs the flaking blood from the lines on her palms. She descends the stairs and seats herself at the table, primly spreading the napkin over her lap.

She looks at the eggs on her plate and thinks: This could use more salt.

Initially, Melena regulates her investment in her surroundings, but it swells, and she watches from her window as a torrent sweeps through Munchkinland and all evidence of her presence is forgotten by the waterlogged turf of the Thropp burial grounds. A few days later, the gardener quits and Bfee orders his secretary to do the maintenance in the soil patches, weeding with no more than hand and heel. Melena lets the young man struggle for a time and then turns up with a trowel and a pretty smile, and it is the beginning of a liaison that ends in articles of correspondence between Bfee and his banker in Gillikin.

She reads the agitation within the realm of Colwen Grounds and correlates it with the rumours abounding on the far side of the gates, measuring the rise and fall and then marked rise of discord, and making use of her forays into town to ingratiate herself to Munchkins of all demographics. The cutting stares evolve into heartfelt compliments and the heartfelt compliments evolve into pleas for action and Melena's popularity soars to an altitude she hasn't yet seen, for she's venerated as the relic of a better time and capitalizes on the advantage.

She lends her voice to the discussions in the coffeehouse, telling them exactly what to hate about Bfee and why, and she grooms their responses so it seems as though they've arrived at the conclusions themselves. When she spies the children squabbling over their roles in the chase, she learns their names and confides, "If I were playing, I'd rather be the Witch," and suddenly the streets are teeming with imperious little Elphabas. She wanders through the crowds as if she is one of them and she carries it all with her – the mist, the darkness, the fire – all of the things for which there is no proper name and no explanation and no need for either, because things improve, in whatever twisted sense of the word there is to constitute adaptations that favour the most ominous parts of her.

There are still days, of course, when Melena feels paper-thin, and days when she is certain that air is not quite making it to her lungs, but she gains as she loses and comes out more cunning than ever before. She misses Nessa terribly and she longs to speak to Elphaba again and it makes no difference to Bfee, to Morrible, to Dorothy. She could order multiple sleeping draughts and rot in her chambers, and it would make no difference to the dismal reality that reigns beyond the walls, because there is no difference to be made unless she throws all her weight behind it.

"I think you're—"

"You're too sentimental for your own good, Melena."

"History is begging to be written."

"We're all mad here."

Melena closes her eyes and instructs herself to focus and does so until she is no longer subject to the throb and thrall of emotion. She waits for the right moment to wrench free and slips away altogether, and so by the time Glinda puts in an appearance, she is collected enough to face the woman who rose in the world on the backs of her daughters.

"Let's not prevaricate," Glinda says bracingly, and Melena's stomach clenches as contempt lances straight through her core. She curls her fists and bites her tongue – there's nothing to gain from transparency, she thinks – and takes pains to uphold an expression that is devoid of any reaction, scouting the gaping space behind the desk and hinging her attention on the dust particles that speckle the air.

They float lazily in the light trained through the adjacent window, and Melena almost laughs at the banality of the view, at the familiarity of the tactic. She's been relegated to the supplicant's half of the study, from which Bfee has been ousted for the duration of Glinda's stay, and she tracks the stream of sunlight to where it terminates against the wardrobe and promptly fails her as a distraction. The wand rests there, just another facet of a persona that dazzles where it doesn't intimidate, and the stray beams dance over a head of icicle-like spikes.

"You have no fondness for me," Glinda declares. "You think I'm complicit in Nessa's death – and I don't blame you for doing so. In truth, I think myself complicit in Nessa's death—"

Melena lifts an eyebrow. "And you've come to be relieved of your guilt?"

"No," Glinda says, and the effort behind her even tone is barely detectable. "I've come to Colwen Grounds to formally introduce myself as your new throne minister, and for the purpose of facilitating an alliance between the two of us."

"I hardly see why you'd deem that necessary."

Glinda goes on as if uninterrupted. "For that to happen, we'll have to overcome our prejudices."

"Our prejudices?" Melena says.

"You've thought me selfish and inconsiderate since we first met all those summers ago, haven't you?" Glinda's lips pull into a knowing smile and she raises one hand in a gesture that is as clement as it is silencing. "You don't have to deny it. I've been susceptible to ulterior motives for most of my life, and until recently they've been oriented the way of personal gain. Even at Shiz, I wasn't fully aware of my influence—"

"May I stop you there, Lady Glinda?"

This trips Glinda mid-sentence but she collects herself before she goes sprawling, gaping, as if wounded, and then frowning as she is obligated to relinquish control to Melena, who watches the lapse with some satisfaction and then readily accepts the transfer.

"I'll be blunt with you," Melena says. "I've just lost a daughter and most of my faith in goodness – innate or otherwise – along with her, so your quest for redemption means very little to me." She stalls for a moment, wondering if she is baring much more than is necessary, and then notices the almost petulant set of the confusion on Glinda's face and goes on without thinking. "Whatever choices you did or did not make, the fact of the matter is that you weren't there when Nessa had need of you at Shiz and you weren't there when she was in danger. It's not the full story, I realize, but it leads me to believe that you were never an especially devoted friend to her."

The words sizzle in the air and Glinda pricks herself on the truths wedged between the embellishments, recoiling as the successive sting of it saps the colour from her cheeks. She snaps her mouth shut and tightens her jaw around what must be the worst of the refutations, but then her lips purse into a haughty line and she smiles too sweetly, forsaking a last attempt at delicacy.

"I suppose that puts us on a similar keel, then," she says, "seeing as you were never an especially devoted mother."

There is a subtle rustling while Glinda shifts within the abundant layers of her gown, stooping to access the lowest drawer, and then produces a small wooden box, which thuds against the desk and releases a gravelly screech as Melena takes it into her hands and slides it closer. Somewhere between undoing the clasp and tilting the lid, she goes numb with the realization of what is inside.

"I was there when Dorothy…when it happened," Glinda says, "and I found this afterward. Apparently it's changed hands a few times."

Melena pries the little green bottle from its nest of shavings and the world shrinks around her. There are white streaks where the label has folded and worn down; the chip along the mouth has dulled and deepened – and yet it incites the same tumult within her as it did the last time she was confronted with the unmistakeable sheen of the glass. A few years ago. All those years ago. A thousand feelings collide with a thousand memories and the result is a lethal host of regrets that crowds her from the inside out.

"He also left you this," Glinda says, proffering an envelope. "I ask that you read it here and then allow me to look it over."

Melena laughs emptily. "You don't trust me?"

"Frankly, I don't trust anyone, and I wouldn't put it past him to turn your history into an opportunity for collusion," Glinda says. "I loved Elphaba dearly, you see, and I admire what she undertook when she chose to rebel against her father, but I'm not willing to repeat her mistakes."

This is an approach that begets more respect in Melena than she will ever admit to and she dwells on the steadiness of Glinda's voice, the placid intelligence that it exudes, before turning her eyes to the letter crunching under the force of her grip. It is marked with neither his name nor hers. She feels it thrumming against her hands, alive, and she doesn't move as thoughts wheel through her brain, pining, seething, warring, and threatening to jeopardize all that she's won with hard months of loss.

I will not, she decides.

The thoughts scatter at once.

"Did he give the order?" she says. "Is he the one who summoned Dorothy to Oz?"

"I can't be sure," Glinda admits. "I imagine that Morrible did the actual summoning, but I doubt he did any impeding. He'd had designs on Munchkinland for years."

"And when would the order have been given?" Melena asks.

"The night of my engagement ball."

The information is so scalding, so forceful, that Melena almost cries out from the pain. She served up her daughter to a charlatan, after all, and then she did it again as if it was a move that made sense – and it did to some deluded part of her. It's a danger, that part. If she sets it free, she'll take him in and let him leave as many times as he pleases, provided he returns often enough to make her feel clever and beautiful and wanted.

I make myself so ill, she thinks. Her hands jerk.

She does it before she can overrule the impulse. The envelope flutters to the floor, discarded. The letter glides into her hands, where it is torn in two, in four, in eight, in sixteen, and then gathered into a neat pile and passed back to an astonished Glinda. He will not be compromising Melena again. She needs her anger to remain pure; it's how she survives. She brushes a jagged shred from her lap and smiles at Glinda, who stares at the wreckage of the words that were to be her answers.

"I…" Glinda fumbles for a response that will indicate poise. "I can't say that I boast any deep understanding of your inner life, but I can hardly condemn all of your behaviour."

"How wonderful to hear."

Glinda masters her disbelief and smirks. "You can be as curt as you'd like," she says, "but don't forget that I was your guest for half a summer, and I know that you went to lengths to protect her. Every time your husband looked her way, you tensed – and she told me of your discussions after I'd left for the Vinkus. It meant a great deal to her that you read those books."

The wall behind Glinda is unadorned; Melena wonders what became of the plaques that once hung there. She will not think about what has just been said. She will not think about the past. She shakes the brunt of the discomfort and when she comes to, Glinda is still reminiscing: "You were always adamant that Nessa accompany her into town—"

"I don't mean to be abrupt, Lady Glinda," Melena interjects, "but you've delivered the letter and you've insinuated that I am weak-minded enough to entertain plots from the man who commissioned the deaths of my daughters. Is there anything more that you require of me before I take my leave?"

"Your presence is disconcerting to the governor," Glinda says plainly.

Melena lets out a brief peal of laughter. "Is that a kind way of evicting me?"

"Actually, it's precisely why I'd like you to stay." Glinda flattens her arms against the desk, arching inward, and somehow the flourish resolves their mutual distaste, making them into co-conspirators. "I can't impose another governor on Munchkinland – not yet. But I don't trust Bfee."

"With good reason," Melena says.

Glinda leans back in the chair and clasps her hands again. "I understand that you've just come into property in the county of Dead Trees, which is sufficient grounds for me to elevate you to the council. When that happens, I'd like you to serve as my eyes in Munchkinland."

"What does that entail?"

"Vigilance. Counsel. The occasional dispute. Seeing as Bfee is already out of hand and showing no signs of improvement, you'll have to veto the worst of his schemes until I can interfere. He'll fight you on everything that benefits the land and the citizens." Glinda's voice takes on a softer note. "If you can, try to safeguard the vulnerable populations: the Animals, the poor, and so on."

"I haven't yet agreed to be your stand-in," Melena points out.

Glinda smiles. "No one close to Elphaba would refuse the chance to better society – and to spite those who participated in wronging her."

Melena offers neither a stance nor a reply.

"I've been told that Munchkinland is verging on its most severe drought in years and I don't expect Bfee to handle the impending difficulties with any grace," Glinda says. "What would you recommend?"

The rapt look on Glinda's face is Melena's insight into the fact that she is being tested. She ponders a few courses of action and then selects one, saying, "Divine wells in the outer regions. Fortify the markets with crops from towns that can spare them. Fund land renewal projects. Do what you can to give the people an illusion of progress." For whatever reason, Melena finds herself set upon excelling, so she adds, "None of it will turn up water in the long run; there's no water to be turned up. But it will buy you time for other strategies and win you their favour."

Glinda nods sagely. "Yes. That'll do. If we can't give them fear, we'll give them hope."

Lapsing into silence, Melena gives in and scrutinizes. There is a sharpness in the depths of Glinda's blue eyes that creates the impression that she can spot three openings where anyone else would be strapped to notice one. It is almost unnerving. Melena's gaze then falls to Glinda's hands, pale and smooth and capable, neatly folded and motionless on the desk. In her lap, Melena's own hands fidget. Dirt is still caked under the nails.

"What is your investment in the future, Glinda?" she asks. "What are you hoping to accomplish?"

"I intend to do right by Oz," Glinda says, with confidence.

Melena can't keep the derision from her face. "Is that so?"

"You don't believe I can?"

"No, I don't believe you can," Melena says, just as certain of her claim. "What's more, I believe you're a fool for trying."

Glinda squares her shoulders, bristling, and Melena is suddenly reminded of the fact that the throne minister is not twenty-four years old. The trace of youth, of stubborn hope and resilience, is still upon her – and yet it is repurposed; funnelled into the myth of goodness that she persists in. Melena regards this through a cloud of disdain and it occurs to her that Glinda is little more and little less than another act in the same play, vastly different from Oz's recent procession of disappointing rulers and still the product of their methods.

"If you're suggesting the outlook that I think you're suggesting, then I disagree," Glinda says. "After all that's happened, I'm not willing to live my life with callousness for a shield."

"Then don't expect to be living it particularly long," Melena says.

Glinda hesitates. "Again, I disagree."

"Why? There's nothing about this mess that can be rectified." Melena's tone is scathing. "Your friends will remain dead and the Ozians will find new witches to blame – it will be you, if you're not careful. They'll squabble and they'll rejoice and they'll starve the same as they've always done, and in the process they'll obliterate the last of the goodness that you flaunt so."

"They will do as I tell them," Glinda says thinly.

"For as long as it suits them," Melena retorts. She lurches back, chair skidding, standing so as to wrangle the last of her patience and hasten her own dismissal. "Now, if you don't mind, I wish to conclude this interview – unless you intend to disagree with me again?"

The tension in Glinda's posture makes it evident that she is none too pleased with the barb, resentful even, to a degree that will not be forgotten any time soon, but she disguises most of the chagrin with an inscrutable mask and rises to call an official end to the meeting. They briefly press each other's hands.

"I wish you the best in your endeavours, Lady Glinda," Melena says. "Don't say I didn't warn you."

Outside the study, Melena slumps against the wall and exhales a sigh, relieved to be free of the deadly shadow that Glinda casts from the high ground. Her fingers wrap tighter around the neck of the bottle that has accompanied her out of the meeting, that will accompany for a long time yet, and she gathers herself up and starts down the corridor, thinking on all that is behind her. She feels splintered; riven by a network of jagged cracks running this way, that way, seguing to her core and threatening to overturn the fragile balance that keeps her upright. But there is something else, something rising, a hunger, a hysteria, and for once it is as though she is positioned at a beginning rather than an ending. There is a whole past in her midst and more to come, a host of mistakes and a series of plans, and Glinda has granted her what she's needed to pair the fragments.

When she reaches her chambers, she perches on the edge of the bed and tucks the bottle in amongst the pillows. She collapses backwards and fixes her eyes on the junction where the wall joins with the ceiling, where a cobweb swings in the breeze that swishes through the open window. She thinks on all that is ahead and she feels prepared.

She does not sleep and she will not forget.

.


A/N: Did you know that there's an actual term for a mother without any children? Yeah.

It's "Queen of the Seven Kingdoms."

(Which is basically my dork way of saying that a good portion of this chapter was inspired by Cersei Lannister, and let it be known that it took me 9.5k+ words to do what Lena Headey can do with 40 seconds and no dialogue.)

Anyway, that's all I've got for you. This story took me down a pretty tough road at times, but I'm glad I buckled down and wrote it, and I'm glad you read it! I'd love to know your thoughts on the ending, or the story as a whole, or just Melena Thropp in general. I'm endlessly fascinated by this woman and her motivations and decisions - and always up for a discussion!