Chapter Thirteen - When A Witch Cries
Dorothy must have knelt at the side of the girl called Rain for hours on end. Not out of pity or any altruistic desire to help, but pure dread. The mutation Rain endured when she put on the hat was enough to strike fear back into Dorothy's heart. She wanted to run away screaming and crying or to grab that bucket and bash in Rain's head.
Suddenly, the green thing started to move. A hand reached out for the robes that lay on the ground and gathered them to itself, casting aside Rain's black robe and throwing the old ones over her thin, bony shoulders. The thing now stood up to her full height, much taller than Rain, almost as tall as Kloxolk was, in fact.
She was still green, though.
Dorothy started to fear the worst. Could it have been? No, it couldn't have been, could it?
The black-clad figure then turned to Dorothy. The face was the same as that which had haunted her dreams those first few months after her first arrival in Oz. Sharp, angular, with pronounced cheek-bones, black lips stretched in a hateful grimace and eyes that blazed with a fierce fire.
"YOU!" a harsh, serrated but grown woman's voice growled.
There was no more doubt in Dorothy's mind. It was her.
"You little brat!" the Witch screamed. "You finally killed me, but then you go and bring me back! Why do you torment me? What did I do to you to deserve this, or anything? You killed my sister, you killed my pets, you bring death wherever you go! WHY? And even worse, WHY DID YOU BRING ME BACK?"
"I didn't!" Dorothy screamed, as if for her life.
"Why am I here, then? I didn't want to live, I don't want anything from this world, except to leave it! You finally give that to me, and then you go and rob it from me! I ought to break your scrawny little neck, you brat!"
Dorothy started running, but she knew there was no hope. She was trapped here, and the Witch was even madder than before.
"I didn't mean to kill you!" Dorothy cried back, not even daring to stop to catch her breath. "I didn't even want to bring you back. We'd all plain forgotten about you, and..."
"Don't lie to me! I've had enough of people and their lies!"
"Please, just forgive me, I didn't mean to kill you!"
The Witch jumped upon Dorothy, striking her with her fists.
"How DARE you ask forgiveness from ME!"
"Well, that's what people do when they've done something bad to someone else," Dorothy said. "They ask for forgiveness and..."
"WHY THE HELL DO YOU THINK YOU SHOULD GET FROM ME WHAT WAS ALWAYS DENIED ME? HOW CAN I FORGIVE YOU WHEN NO ONE FORGAVE ME!"
She erupted into screams, still striking Dorothy with her fists in her fury. She then turned to the wall and threw her face against it.
"Damn these tears!" she wailed. "They burn every time!"
Dorothy dared to look up and saw that the Witch was crying. Her hands dared not go up to the face, for the tears were burning into her eyes, since they were of water. But it was causing blood to pour down her face. She tried to put her hand on her shoulder for comfort, but was struck back by a strong blow from her hand.
For some strange reason, Dorothy didn't seem that afraid anymore. She had always imagined the Witch to be some angry old crone who was all evil and had not a shred of goodness or emotion in her. But seeing her cry broke all of that. Was this ugly, green thing really all as bad as they made it out to be? The Wizard said she was, as had everyone else in Oz.
But all their word seemed insignificant against this green-skinned woman, crying her eyes out.
Even worse was the reason why she was wailing.
She wanted to die.
That made no sense. Nobody in their right mind would really want to die. Life was just too pretty to want to leave it and all of its beauty. What kind of unhappy, hopeless thing would be so weary of life that they would willingly want to die?
Silence followed as Dorothy tried to wrap her little mind around the thought of it.
"So what happens now?" Dorothy asked gloomily.
"What do you mean?" the Witch asked.
"Exactly that. What happens now?"
"Nothing! Don't you get it?" she snapped back. "There's nothing left! Now leave me alone before I burn you alive."
"How about Rainy?"
The Witch cackled in apoplectic surprise. "What the hell are you babbling about?"
"Th' other girl, the one called Rain." Dorothy returned. "Where's she at?"
"You stupid brat! Don't you understand? She's not here anymore, its the Wicked old Witch! Now go before I sick the Monkeys on you!"
"They're not yours no more. They're free."
"Just get the hell away from me!"
Dorothy said no more, and left quietly, feeling sad in her heart that something had happened that she could have prevented. But this made her feel bad because there was a real person, not just some wicked thing, living inside that hideous green body, and what about Rain? She was somewhere inside, she figured, but exactly how to get it out, she did not know.
"WAIT!" a voice called out. The tall figure of the Witch then came back and ran over to where Dorothy stood. She flinched, fearing some other injury. But what she saw was rather disturbing. The green figure seemed to be shifting personalities, both of which shared the same body, but spoke with different voices. One was the Witch, but the other one seemed like Rain's voice. As one spoke, the other would interject with another voice that was contradictory to what the first had said.
"Princess, don't leave yet." a second voice spoke from within the Witch's body. "It's Rain, we're both inside..."
"Didn't I tell you to leave me, you brat?" the Witch's voice barked. "Now go! I've half a mind to..."
"We have to get back, perhaps when Glinda returns she can..."
"Don't make me tell you again!"
"Don't listen to her, just take me back to the city!"
"LEAVE, YOU LITTLE TROLLOP!"
The last words were directed both at Dorothy and at the other voice within the Witch, and the two began to argue within themselves until they lost strength and fainted from exhaustion.
There Dorothy sat, in the musty hall of Kiamo Ko, with the body of her mortal enemy at her side, not knowing what to minutes ticked by fast, then turning into hours, and Dorothy had forgotten about the General and the plan he had embarked upon. She didn't even notice them fly over Kiamo Ko searching for them on their way back to the Emerald City. Everything going on in the outside world seemed very far away, very detached: this was reality, this hall inside Kiamo Ko, where the past had come to life again and was returning to repay Dorothy for her crime.
But it wasn't a crime, she told herself. I did it so I could get home, and I was helping the Wizard, and I didn't know any better, and I just wanted to apologize. But it didn't change the fact that the woman was dead at her hand. And now here she was again, alive and angrier than before.
What could she do?
"Ikol..."
The moment the Wizard spoke the Unspoken Name of the Nameless Traitor, it seemed to echo silently across the land, yet with all the power of a freight train. Rivers hushed their babbling, birds ceased their singing and all the beasts made no noise.
In Kiamo Ko, the voice seemed to shatter the timeless void into which they were now trapped, bringing them back into reality. The Witch was startled out of her exhaustive state, and looked about like a hunter on the prowl. Immediately she ran up towards the East Tower, and came back in a fury.
"Where's my broom? Where's my cloak? What have you done with the Book?"
"I don't know!"
"What about the glass, huh? I suppose you lost the Slippers, too!"
"I don't know!" Dorothy whined again.
The Witch made a face and mocked her. "Don't you get it? The name has been said, we've got to go!"
Seizing Dorothy by the wrist, she ran to the gate of the castle.
It seemed that they would have to walk.
(Elphaba lives! But she's not the musical Elphaba at all. She's the insane, atheistic, evil Elphaba from the book [not the evil crone from the movie]. Rain will, for the foreseeable future, represent the good, innocent, powerful Elphaba from the musical. Yes, my Elphaba is very complex. She's not just wholly evil or wholly "misunderstood". It's all part of my own philosophical battle with Elphaba, one that I'm still trying to sort out and win. Next chapter, we go some place new!)