happy anniversary, my fellow wicked-lovers. i know i'm a day late (oops) and i actually wanted to update yesterday to like celebrate (kind of) the 17th anniversary of the musical but i wasn't 100% satisfied with the chapter so... yeah.
we're starting this chapter at shiz again.
thanks for the reviews, btw. keep them coming and stay safe! (and also vote. i never wanted to use this platform for like political claims or whatevs but this is pretty damn important so i'm just gonna ignore my own rules for a sec and say: vote.)
and also: happy halloween everyone! i had this awesome plan to greenify myself and go as elphaba but corona is obviously still a thing so i'm sitting in my room instead with my skin still absolutely white. sad.
but whatevs.
enjoy this chapter and leave a review!

The World Keeps Spinning On And On

By IceK04

7

Mysteries

It was a spectacle, to say the least, to see the carriage of the Thropp family arrive on the grounds of Shiz University only two months after its departure -and surely much earlier than anyone had expected it to. Which wasn't that hard, really, since no one had expected it to arrive ever again -or at least not under circumstances such as these.

It was so much of a spectacle, actually, that Boq Underhill, while doing a major double-take, almost fell up the stairs to the Agriculture Building -which would've been a huge embarrassment indeed, with all the girls looming close by to the side of the Crage Hall Dormitory Building since that was where the girls always were. Why though, Boq didn't know.

He couldn't be sure if Miss Glinda -somehow, they'd gone back to 'Miss Glinda' now, right after her sudden appearance at the boys' table- was among them, but even so, he didn't want to risk it. Thankfully, the shoulder of a young man that had just left the building provided a good enough support that he could grab and hold himself upright, fingers clutching the stack of books that were about to fall from his arms. Boq was just about to apologize when he recognized the boy before him to be Fiyero -and whatever Fiyero had been doing in the Agriculture Building was an entirely different mystery- and the two shadows looming behind weren't those of the columns but of Crope and Tibbett. What a strange (and lucky) coincidence indeed.

"Isn't that…?" Started Fiyero but didn't seem to have it in him to finish the sentence.

Boq nodded rather numbly.

The questions of why they were here and what they were doing died on his lips. He didn't think either of them was concentrating on him enough to answer -they were all staring at the carriage that was now coming to a halt in the center of the cobblestoned square. No one else paid it as much attention as the four boys did, and it must've looked very strange, though neither of them could be bothered then.

Boq carefully glanced around, trying to catch sight of the other ones' faces, if only to guess what they were thinking. They seemed rather shaken, the three of them, and their faces contorted with great anticipation. Perhaps that weird gleaming in their eyes was hope, thought Boq, as they looked on how the carriage came to a halt a good twenty meters away from them.

The question of could it be her loomed in the air around the remaining Charmed Circle, but no one could work up the courage to speak the words aloud.

Sadly, the door of the carriage was on the side facing away from them, so they couldn't watch it open, and the occupants emerge. But they could see the coachman disappear behind the carriage and count the seconds it could possibly take for whoever was inside the carriage to step out.

Underneath the carriage, Boq could make out the shadows of feet -two pairs- that settled on the ground, and beside him, Fiyero stiffened. Seconds of waiting passed agonizingly slow, and Boq could feel his heart picking up its pace, pounding harder and faster against his ribcage, his chest tightened. Anticipation made his fingers itch, and he felt himself tense even more as the shadows stepped, finally, out of the dark.

Nessarose was the first one to be seen, and soon after came Nanny, and Boq held his breath. His heart went thump, thump, thump inside his chest, and his eyes flitted across the square, to the carriage, to the wrinkled skin on Nanny's forehead, to the rich brown of Nessa's hair. Thump, thump, thump went his heart, and oh, how long could she possibly take? She was fast, he knew, on long, thin legs and always with somewhere to be.

But no matter how deep his nails dug into the palms of his hands as he clenched his fists, no green skin appeared suddenly in his line of sight. No dark brown eyes pierced into his, thin lips opened to scold him for not sending her his findings.

"She's not there," said Crope -or was it Tibbett? – behind him, and Boq's heart sank.

He looked again at the women beside the carriage, but there was only Nanny with her turtle neck and her wrinkled skin, looking all too pleased with herself, and Nessa, no arms but all the more beautiful. There was triumph in her eyes -and it made them feel sick.

"She's not there," said Fiyero, as if hearing it once hadn't been enough -no, the words had to be spoken aloud for him to understand. Elphaba wasn't there. Elphaba hadn't come. Elphaba would never come.

Silence filled the air around them for a moment, and Boq tried to imagine how they looked through Nessa's eyes. Could she see the disappointment on their faces? Could she see the way their shoulders slumped, the way the hope left their eyes? Could she see that they were utterly lost without the compass to show them which way their path would lead them? Could she? Or was she gifted with a different skill than her older sister?

"Well, it's a good thing, if you ask me," Crope started, clearly setting up a joke that was bound to fail -and they all knew it. "I don't want to have spent all that money on stamps for nothing."

No one laughed, least of all Crope himself.

Boq tilted his head forward to look at the toes of his shoes and, not knowing what else to do, he bent low to wipe a spot of dirt off of them. When he looked back up, his eyes found Nessa's. Somehow, he didn't feel even a bit sorry as he saw the disappointment in them -disappointment that neither of the boys had rushed, happily, to greet her.

It must've been hard for her, growing up in her sister's shadow. But Boq frowned and had to remind himself that Elphaba had been the one in the shadows, not Nessa. Things had seemed to start to change only here at Shiz. And they had all welcomed that change with open arms, Elphaba albeit reluctantly. Anticipation -excitement- had never seemed to be Elphaba's strongest suit, after all, and she'd found the prospect of change lying in the future rather uncomfortable. But change had come, this way or the other -only that it was a much different change than any of them had thought it to be.

Boq wondered if they would've been able to prevent this, hadn't they hoped so much for change. True, they'd hoped for change in different things -but they had hoped for change, and perhaps the universe didn't care what change exactly lay behind those wishes.

The first letter arrived an entire month later at a time that Elphaba hadn't slept a night through in over a week. Her skin was pale -as pale as green could go, at least- and the dark circles underneath her eyes had never been more prominent. She'd been sitting downstairs in the living room, reading a book that, for once, wasn't about trade agreements and economic expansion and staring into the flames of the fireplace -at Melena's insistence -and how strange was that?

The woman had burst into Elphaba's study a good two hours earlier, a glass of what Elphaba had assumed to be wine in her hand.

"Come downstairs," she'd said.

Meanwhile, Elphaba had forced herself not to say a single thing, afraid that if she opened her mouth, it would slack open and leave Melena to think her dumbfounded. Which she'd been -not that she'd ever admit it. So, she'd simply stared at her mother for a moment, unable to do anything else, until she'd finally regained her posture, clearing her throat.

"What for?" She had asked, her voice incredibly sharp.

"It's freezing up here," Melena had said. "Come downstairs, you're gonna catch the flu."

Elphaba had stared on, still dumbfounded. "Wh-what?"

"I said," the older woman had turned, one hand firmly on the doorframe as she'd fixed stern eyes on her daughter. "Come downstairs. You getting sick is the last thing anyone needs right now. And Nanny's gonna make my life hell if she returns to another dead Thropp."

Somehow, she'd managed to sound extremely unbothered by even just the idea of Elphaba dying. And somehow, Elphaba had managed to push the feelings of hurt down, bury them underneath more important matters.

"You can do whatever it is you're doing in front of the fireplace as well," Melena had finished, and one finger had pointed impatiently into the hallway. "Come, now."

Elphaba's fingers had loosened around her pen. "But-"

"Elphaba," Melena's voice had been something between exhaustion and frustration -which could go together easily and quite well, too. "I didn't climb all these stairs for nothing. Don't test my patience."

Her grey eyes had hardened as she'd stared at Elphaba from across the room, fingers seemingly clutching the wine glass harder. She'd lingered on in the doorway for a second and then turned, stepping into the hallway, into the shadows until all Elphaba could see of her was a dark silhouette on an even darker background. And Elphaba had stared again -or rather, still.

"I'm still waiting," her mother's voice had sounded, impatiently, and Elphaba had looked at the papers in her hands -a letter complaining vigorously about something she'd already forgotten about- contemplating what her options were now, or at least pretending to, before she'd let them drop onto the desk and stood, at last, to follow Melena into the hallway.

She'd watched the woman intensely as they'd made their way downstairs, trying to catch her swaying, staggering, wavering -trying to find out if the alcohol Elphaba was sure she'd had consumed was having an effect on her.

But there was no such sign, and when they reached the living room, and Melena stopped in the doorway to dig her fingers into Elphaba's shoulder and lead her to sit in front of the fireplace, it was already too late to start investigating.

Or not, it had turned out, as Elphaba'd spotted the open wine bottle sitting on the table -and a half-empty one at that. She'd scrunched up her nose. So, Melena was drinking now.

"What about the leaves?" She'd asked, and Melena had blinked at her, almost in confusion, for a second.

Then, her eyes had widened in realization. "Oh, the leaves," she'd run her hand over her forehead as if taken by a sudden tiredness. "I've run out of those."

Elphaba hadn't been able to suppress a snort. "So, you're drinking wine instead?"

Melena's eyes had narrowed into small slits. "And you've run out of friends, I see. So, you're reading books instead?"

Elphaba hadn't known what to say to that. She'd simply turned to stare into the fire and had tried to forget her mother's -her mother's- words. They'd been very persistent, though, lingering on and on in the back of her mind as if trying to mock her -and doing an exceptionally good job at it as well.

"Here."

Her head had whipped around, facing a slender hand holding an even more slender glass of wine. Elphaba had wrinkled her nose. "What exactly do you intend me to-?"

But she'd been cut short. "It warms from within. And you look half-dead."

"I won't start drinking at four in the afternoon!"

"Why not?" Melena had retorted, swirling the wine in her own glass. "Do you have something better to do? Apart from freezing to death, of course."

Elphaba had shaken her head.

"Some kind of mother you are," she'd muttered under her breath. "Encouraging your own daughter to drink."

But there'd been no response from Melena, and Elphaba had pointedly turned her head away. Moments had passed in which only the sound of crackling flames had filled the silence until the quiet rustling of clothes, hesitant heels against the floor had caused Elphaba to stir -though only slightly.

"You're right," Melena's voice had sounded, and a quiet, unamused chuckle had fled her lips. "I wouldn't want you to end up like me."

Perhaps, in another world (one in which Elphaba's personality was more along the lines of normal and in which Melena had developed those greatly anticipated motherly feelings everyone had expected of her), she would've dared to speak up.

"But don't you see," she would've cried, exasperated, to say the least. "I'm bound to end up just like you! No education, no friends to confide in, no mission to follow. But the Eminency on my shoulders to make up for that!"

"I wouldn't want that either," Elphaba had bit instead, and perhaps the snide in her voice had been supposed to make up for the words unsaid.

Silence had, once again, reigned over the room. Then, Melena had sighed -at which Elphaba had refused to turn around.

"I give you a finger and you bite off the entire hand," she'd said, quietly and perhaps even defeatedly.

Elphaba's lips had pressed into a thin line. "Well, usually a finger pointed at me means insults and mockery to come so forgive me for mistaking your oh-so-frequent gesture of care for anything but!"

But Melena had already left the room, and Elphaba hadn't been sure if she'd heard anything at all.

Perhaps it was better that way, Elphaba now thought as she closed her book, staring into the fireplace. Perhaps it was better not to have shown to the woman how much it bugged her -the lack of care, the piled-up insults.

Elphaba stood, at last, discarding the blanket she'd wrapped around her shoulders, fingers clutching her book hard. She'd wasted enough time on reading, as it was, she didn't need her own muddled thoughts to double down on that, now. Surely, there was a huge pile of work waiting upstairs in her study, now, brought there by far too eager housemaids, and she couldn't delay it any longer.

She made her way upstairs again, slowly and almost hesitantly, dreading the moment of arrival since it meant hours and hours of work to come. Her brow was furrowed deeply as she entered her study, lingering on in the doorway for just a second, desperate to postpone the inevitable for as long as possible.

A parcel lay in the middle of her desk, wrapped up in brown paper packaging, tied with raffia strings and with a thick, cream-white envelope tucked underneath its bow. At first, Elphaba did not pay it too much of her mind. She got numerous packages just like this several times a day, after all, and they usually contained but documents and agreements for her to sign and complaint letters for her to read. But then, she sat down behind her desk and bent to put the parcel away -and saw, on the side of the brown paper, the post stamp of the Gillikin -faded purple flowers on an even more faded green background- and felt her heart beat faster immediately.

Long, bony, green fingers fiddled with the raffia strings as she cursed whoever had prepared the parcel to hell and back for tying them so tightly. She discarded the envelope to the side -for now, she told herself- and started ripping the paper apart, impatient fingers seeking the content before her eyes had even caught sight of it.

Two books lay inside the parcel, well-thumbed and yellowed, with cloth bindings and peeled-off letters. "Faith As Second To Opinion" read the first title, "Anatomy Of The Races" the second.

Elphaba frowned deeply, fingers fanning out over the bindings as she tried to think of any way that the contents of these books should help her (their) cause. Any way at all.

She looked at the books again, skeptically, and tried to ignore the feeling of her heart sinking, going back to its usual, rhythmic thumping -no faster than it should be.

Then, she turned to open the envelope that had been tied to the parcel, opening it much less enthusiastically than she had the package. Five papers of thick, white paper emerged, and she held them, almost tenderly, for a second before bending low to read.

Dear Elphie,

Elphaba paused, frowning. She had neither heard nor seen the, albeit ridiculous, nickname in almost half a year -and now that it was written right in front of her, she didn't know how to feel.

She read on…

First of all, you must know that I'm very sorry for having taken so long to write to you. All of us are, actually. You see, things just aren't quite the same as before, and we've found ourselves missing you at our table. Of course, we've been busy with our midterm exams, too, and didn't have too much time to spare on our research. But we didn't neglect it totally, Elphie, don't be mad! We just had to squeeze some time in in the afternoon, so we could have enough time studying. Surely you understand.

Anyway, as for the books… well, I remembered the conversation we had one afternoon in the café about the religious part of the issue, and I remembered the drawing I'd meant to show to dear Doctor Dillamond so shortly before his tragic death. So, I started searching for some more on that, and I'm proud to tell you that I've finally found something of importance. The book 'Faith As Second To Opinion' was written by this great philosopher who tried to combine all different religions and unite them. I believe he initially intended his scriptures to be used as a way to open doors to a new kind of religion or perhaps a new kind of thinking, but I can't be sure. He mentions the creation of Animals and animals and humans a whole lot of times, I think, and although I know you aren't fond of neither religion nor philosophy, I thought this might be helpful to cover every single aspect that those who support Animal Banns might bring up in a potential debate.

The second book is one that Fiyero had his father send him all the way from the Vinkus. They're not on good terms with the alphabet in the west, is how Fiyero put it, but he says there should be some information, some theories on the differences between humankind and animals and Animals too. (As well as theories concerning the races of humans themselves, I believe.)

Now, as far as news go; something very tragic happened just this afternoon. Imagine this: We are all sitting in some café in town, Crope and Tibbett and Fiyero and I (and your sister joins us too, later on, along with Nanny -and how come you never mentioned she'd return? It shocked us all greatly!) and taking some time to relax when Glinda runs up to our table. And she is so distraught, Elphie, so very distraught. She's crying -or at least she did before, but she stopped by the time she sits down- and she is so excited -and not the good kind of excited, Elphie! So, after a while -she won't start talking, Elphie, she just won't- Crope asks what's going on. And Glinda tells us… well, I'll try to remember just what she said, but I can't be sure…

She tells us that this morning, right after the sorcery seminar with Miss Greyling, Grommetik came to her with a note that said she was to come to the infirmary as quickly as possible. And when she arrived, Madame Morrible was waiting for her, and she looked so sorry for Glinda and told her that it seemed her poor Ama Clutch wouldn't live to see the next day. So, they went inside, Glinda says, and she stood at Ama Clutch's bed and the Ama was still talking all that nonsense about talking nails and-

Crope can't suppress a snort there, you know Crope after all, and Glinda snaps at him to be quiet. Our Glinda, Elphie, snaps at Crope. Can you imagine? That's how upset she is!

She then goes on to say that she asked the madame for some privacy to say goodbye without someone looking over her shoulder. It felt so inappropriate, Glinda tells us. At first, Madame Morrible refused to leave, but then there was the nurse in the adjoining room, and Glinda convinced the madame that she'd provide a well enough chaperone for the short time that she asked to be alone. So, Madame Morrible left. And Glinda was just so upset. She says something like, "I had never seen my Ama like this before. She'd never been that bad, not a single time when I visited her. And I'd known my Ama Clutch for quite a while, you know" to us -and she starts crying then, Elphie. Real, big tears. It's mortifying- "she took care of me since I was a little girl and I know everything about her life. Probably even more than my parents. I know of her late husband…" and then she says some things about her Ama Clutch that, I'm afraid, I can't remember. But I think, after that, Glinda goes on like this: "Nothing she said made any sense at all and I just wanted my Ama Clutch back. It was all my fault that she was the way she was."

Neither of us boys understands, at first. But then Glinda tells us how she made some disease up for her Ama to have when she was late for orientation day so that she wouldn't be placed in the Pink Dormitory. She'd never meant it to become real, Glinda says. She tells us that she felt like she owned it to Ama Clutch to lift whatever curse had befallen her before she died. So, she tried some magic.

And Elphie, she says it worked! Glinda says Ama Clutch came back to senses! She was saying something about winds and how all of us should stay out of it until it was the right time. And Glinda wanted to apologize for cursing her with that horrible disease, but Ama Clutch wouldn't let her.

Elphie, she started talking about the day Doctor Dillamond died. She said she'd seen some strange shadows in the doctor's lab and had hurried to check on him. And Elphie, don't say 'I told you so' but Ama Clutch said it was Grommetik. She said it was Grommetik who killed Doctor Dillamond. She saw it happen when she entered, apparently.

Glinda tried to get her to say a bit more, but Ama Clutch didn't have the chance. She died soon after.

But we know now, Elphie! We know you were right! Or well, at least technically. Not Madame Morrible killed the Goat, but her creepy tik-tok machinery.

It wasn't just a conspiracy on your part!

I wish this were something you could be proud of having been right about. But then there's murder involved, and nothing that has murder involved seems to be something to be proud of.

What to make of this newfound insight, Elphie, I'm wondering.

Perhaps you can come up with something?

Let us know if you achieve something worth knowing.

Your friend,

Boq Underhill

(and Crope and Tibbett and Fiyero too, though they didn't have the chance to sign this personally.)

Whether screaming would be a good -and reasonable- way to react or not, Elphaba was still trying to make up her mind about as the letter fell silently on the desk before her.