Galinda had vomited in the castle for three months. Perhaps in protest. Runcible was as she left it, and, yet, nothing in her was the same. Galinda saw herself through Glinda's eyes. The vilest Gillikinese, the one she wanted to end (but not before she inflicted with the severest of miseries)—was her own self after all. What an ingenious plot, Elphaba's revenge was. A double death. Galinda died in the forest, and now her forest life itself evaporated. Or more likely, never existed. The love she thought she found—a mere device devised by Elphaba and Shell. Galinda shut her eyes tight against the memories of Elphaba's birthday, her suffering but a fragment of what Galinda forced on Elphaba for months. Glinda couldn't bear it—to know that she had tortured Elphie. Galinda faced her own immolation. How well Elphaba had hidden it. What an enrapturing trick.
This is where Glinda and Galinda agreed: Elphaba had beguiled her and Galinda deserved it.
It was sickening to be cut to the bone and have no one to blame but oneself. It was as if her body protested the fact of its existence by trying to eject her from herself.
"Grab another rag!" Nanny yelled to Shenshen, while Galinda heaved again, leaning over her bed in the castle.
Since returning from the forest, she learned to keep water down and small pieces of salted bread and fruit. Anything more complicated came right back up. Her father insisted she eat like a proper Gillikinese. He complained over her sunken cheeks and shallow breasts, but Galinda couldn't comply. Not when she was here again. On the same bed where she took Elphaba.
"I need to get up," Galinda said.
"You can barely stand," Nanny protested, "and the King has insisted you stay in this room. It has the best sunlight for your health."
"I have no need of sunlight!" Galinda said, throwing her feet out of the covers, rising to a wobble, fingers sinking into the swirled groves of the maple wood bedposts. "Take me to the west guest suite."
"That room isn't half the size of Your Highness's room," Nanny tried again, her left hand wiping her brow.
"Are you to tell the Princess of Gillikin where she can or cannot sleep, woman?" Galinda asked in her royal tone and immediately winced. "I'm sorry, Nanny. I'm tired," she said and looked up to see Nanny freeze with surprise. Galinda could have kicked herself. A Princess never apologizes to her servants, especially a Munchkinlander servant, a woman whom Galinda supposedly loathed. But she no longer hated the woman, no longer detested her accent, her smell, her overbearing caring. No Galinda was no longer anything like her before-self. But if she was no longer her old self and could never be Glinda, who was she?
Two beats of silence passed. Nanny cleared her throat and nodded. "I'll prepare your new room at once, Your Royal Highness." Taking Shenshen, the old woman left.
In their absence, Galinda collected a few items: her mother's necklace, her favorite fan, her strawberry perfume, her face talc, a jar of ground mother-of-pearl, stuffing her pockets. At her closet, she saw a fur scarf. That fur scarf. As she reached out to touch it, she heard Elphaba say:
Your Royal Highness is beautiful. No different than every other morning.
Her hand flew back to her chest. Oh, Elphie! Her chest smarted for a ruse. How pathetic. To suffer this intensely for a mirage, a maddening, sickening chimera. She needed to release these memories: Glinda's life, her lessons…her beloved. She needed to forget. But when Nanny knocked on her door, she plucked the scarf from its shelf, wrapping it around her while she turned and exited.
…
"Elphaba, eat. You must eat," Avaric said beside her at the kitchen table, pushing the plate of porridge in front of her, again. Elphaba's will dissolved. It has been four months since she told Glinda the truth. She could still see everything as it happened. The poppy flowers she crushed into her sister's bedtime tea. The ruby red slippers she pulled off her feet. Glinda's look of confusion as she ushered the girl into the outdoor clearing. Facing Runcible, she motioned for Glinda to slip the shoes on.
"Elphaba, why? Why must I wear these slippers? Please let me explain what happened with Shell. I-I- didn't want any of this—Oh, Elphaba, please!" Glinda pleaded, her voice breaking into a cry as she slipped on the red slippers.
Elphaba couldn't speak. She couldn't swallow past the lump in her throat, past the malice of her deceptions, past the wreckage of her failures. She could only come undone. Come what may to the Weavers. Come what may to her sister's legs. Come what may to her own happiness. Glinda was the only thing that mattered.
"It'll all be clear. Turn around. Click your heels three times and say 'There's no place like home.'"
"I don't understand," Glinda said, tears falling down her cheeks.
"If you love me at all," Elphaba choked. "Obey me once more, my sweet."
Tears snuck down her cheeks, but realizing Elphaba would neither relent nor let her explain, Glinda did as she was told.
For a moment nothing happened. Relief flooded Elphaba, a warm embracing calm, a quiet inward sigh. Perhaps Glinda couldn't be magicked away. Perhaps she was here to stay. But then Glinda's hands grew taunt. Her fingers forcefully extended outward by her sides as if iron rods were shooting through them. Groaning, she floated a foot off the earth, sparks flying from her feet. Elphaba wanted to reach out and pin her to the earth, to herself. But Galinda glowed bright, too bright to behold. Her garb transformed into the Princess's, and she was back on the ground.
Running.
Away from the forest. Away from their cabin. Away from Elphaba.
Turning back not once.
Falling off the horizon.
Elphaba felt emptied. She dropped to her knees, hours passed, rain fell, but she couldn't get up, not until Boq found her a day later. She had assumed Galinda would send the Sheriff to find her, to lock her up or hang her. But no one came. So she waited for what would never come. After all these days and months…she still waited for Glinda to come home.
…
More days passed. Galinda peered into the looking glass and whispered her morning mantra, "Your life in the forest didn't exist. You are not Glinda. Elphaba never loved you." She sighed. "How could she? Look at you." Before-Galinda reveled in her beauty but now-Galinda could only feel disgust. She saw the breasts that Shell squeezed, the limbs he held, the back he pressed, and the orifices he filled. And when she didn't see that, she remembered: her fingers that penetrated Elphaba, her hands that threw water at her, her eyes that looked at her nakedness, her mouth that said unspeakable evils. Appalled, she turned away from her vanity. Cursing herself, she went down to the chapel to say her morning prayers, prayers that could never hold the weight of her guilt.
"I have offended against your holy ordinances. I left undone those things which I ought to have done; and I have done those things which I ought not to have done. Nothing good is in me. O, Unnamed God, have mercy on me, cleanse and restore your penitent servant...I'll do anything."
Was anyone listening to her? What could ever atone for what she had done? She pulled herself up from her knees, kissing the feet of stone statues, walking toward the breakfast hall.
Waiting in the corridor, Morrible said, "His Majesty wishes to see Your Highness."
"I'll go at once," Galinda said, walking toward the dining hall.
"His Majesty is in his study this morning."
Galinda nodded, redirecting her steps. What business could be so important that her father skipped breakfast?
She entered her father's study and her breath caught. That smell! Her father's scrolls and letters. Suddenly, she saw Avaric's books in Elphaba's bedroom. She bit her lip, trying to stop it from shaking.
Her father sat at his wooden desk in a recessed corner of the room, looking old, as if he aged by years and not moons. Behind him were three lancet windows and before him were teetering piles of books and papers. Stepping closer to her father's stone desk, her heart quickened, her face flushed. How could it be? How was she doing this?
Every parchment, every letter, every open book, every signature, every single one of them—she could read! The forest hadn't all been a mirage. Elphaba's lessons had been real.
"Come to me, girl," her father said, looking up from the letter before him.
"You asked for me?" she said, her voice cracking. Could her father tell? Would he beat her for it? Could she even hide it? Gaze down, you idiot. She kept her eyes on the line of sealing wax between the stone tiles.
"My dear Galinda, whatever have they done to you? Where has my bright girl gone?" her father exhaled, "Come nearer to me."
Galinda walked closer until she could feel his breath across her breasts that were presented tightly in her bodice.
"You are the spitting image of your mother," he said, putting a hand on her waist, his thumb grazing back and forth against her hip bone. Galinda's stomach buckled. She raised her forearm to her mouth, twisting backward. He rose from her seat and grabbed her shoulders.
"Are you ill again, my Galinda?"
"Please, father," Galinda pleaded, remembering all the ways her father touched her, "Please," she cried, trying to twist away.
He forced her against himself. His move to comfort, made her feel even smaller. She turned her head to keep her face from being pressed too tightly to his chest. Looking down, she saw the lower half of his letter.
…I can no longer keep the Paltos Lords at bay.
If Princess Glinda is too ill to be married, the Paltos Lords demand to be compensated for this loss. They demand a set amount of steel and fresh timber to be sent from the mines and hills
of the Great Gillikin Forest.
If they do not receive this by end of the year, they will move against Runcible Castle. I have tried my best to placate them, but they will not be assuaged.
Please be advised: if Your Highness declines again, I shall have no choice but to join them.
Sincerely,
Sir Chuffrey
…
"She will not see you. If she does see you, she says she will spit in your face," Boq said, head bowed, brows knit, "What happened between you?"
Elphaba imagined—on numerous occasions—Nessa's shrieks the morning she woke up with her old legs. How her sister must have cursed and twisted, swore and shouted.
When Elphaba returned that evening with Boq, she heard only silence. Nessa was gone. In her place a note that said, "I shall never forgive you."
"Her legs are worsening," Boq said.
"I know," Elphaba said.
"She can't walk anymore. She says they ache and she has none of her old medicine."
Elphaba had freed Glinda by condemning her sister to a life of suffering and hiding. Elphaba had told herself she was doing the right thing. But was it nobility that made her act?
She went to Pfannee and the other Weavers, asking where she could find the flowers needed for Nessa's medicine. Petals that were everywhere in Munchkinland were nowhere in Gillikin. The Weavers said they saw some grow at the edge of Runcible Castle, but no Weaver would venture that close to the Castle. Not after all the new edicts of late. Edicts that prohibited any Munchkinlander in Gillikin from walking outside without a labor permit. If found, they were subject to fine or arrest. Runcible gave Munchkinlanders a choice: either eviction or slavery. Weavers worked for no one but themselves.
Elphaba thought she could escape the insanity that caught her father. Now she realized how sensible his sadness had been. This is how one feels when one couldn't protect one's loved ones. What use was she? Elphaba followed in father's footsteps. She betrayed her siblings and killed Glinda. Everyone she was supposed to protect, she failed, ruined, and destroyed. Who else would she hurt? Her multiple losses inspired a new aspiration: harmlessness. She must never be close to anyone, not anymore.
She stopped her classes and forbade any of the Weaver children from coming to the cabin. She told the Munchkinlanders that Glinda remembered who she was and went back to her Gillikinese family. She didn't tell them it was the royal family (although, rumors circulated that Glinda was of some importance). Since Glinda's departure, the cabin dried up, as empty and silent as the day the siblings had found it.
Avaric was the only one who visited. And when he did, Elphaba made him take more of her away. She gave back his books, one by one. She didn't deserve them without Glinda. She preferred emptiness. Abandoned and impoverished, she was without country, without home, without family, without purpose, but at least she had the truth: she didn't deserve love.
Avaric made porridge for her. She managed a few bites.
"Elphaba, eat. You must!"
Her normal sinewy frame had turned skeletal. Her body was too weak to go on this way, but where would she go anyway. No one would care if she disappeared, pound by pound, piece by piece, breath by breath. Even Avaric, who seemed worried, would certainly see after her death that she had been a burden, a disturbance, a trial whose absence only brought relief. She made her peace with it. She would finish what she started. Return to the lake. Take her final bow. But before she left, she wished to see Nessarose. This is the only thing she thought she still deserved. Not forgiveness but a proper farewell. Stubborn as ever, Nessa refused her.
…
Marry Sir Chuffrey?! Seated at her vanity, Galinda released a defeated scream. To be permanently attached to a man who was the essence of depravity, an eternal reminder of how she tortured the one person whom she loved? To be forced to answer at his beck and call, to serve him, in any and all ways? The thought made Galinda sick. Was there no way to escape this? Would her honor be sacrificed for the safety of Runcible? Staring at her looking glass, she spoke to herself—her new ritual of late— "Don't give in. You must find some way out of this!"
But how? Rubbing her arms, she paced. She could only pray, and nothing had come of that.
KNOCK! KNICK!
"Come in," she said, half expecting Nanny to be on the other end, but Milla stood instead. Her cousin was the one element of before-Galinda's life that was pure, and, thus, Galinda avoided her. Milla's mouth watered with questions that Galinda couldn't answer—lest a single detail of her time in the forest make it back to the ears of the King, and the whole forest be burned to the ground. She lied. She said her mind was a fog. She knew how to play that game. She woke up in a field after what felt like a long nap, she said. It never occurred to her that it had been close to a year she had been sleeping.
On Galinda's new bed, Milla started again, "You don't look ill, not in the slightest. How can this be if you had eaten nothing? And what happened to your hair? Why is it cut off?"
"I—I—"
"And your midpassage looks rounder than before—"
A compliment for any Gillikinese women but one that Galinda dared not entertain.
"Oh, Milla! I haven't the slightest idea. Perhaps it was a dark fairy curse?" Galinda tried.
"But how could they have found you from inside the palace?"
Galinda remembered Elphaba's last day in the castle and shivered. Galinda had lured the darkness in, played host to her own desecration.
"Why couldn't anyone find you in the forest?" Milla pressed again.
She had been found. By Elphaba, by Nessa, by Boq, by Avaric, by the Sheriff, by her students, and eventually by Shell.
"Milla, everything's fine now. I've returned," she said, a blinding ache building behind her eyes.
"But what happens if you disappear again?" Milla asked, grabbing Galinda's hands.
"I won't. I won't leave you," Galinda said, hoping it sounded more like a promise and less like 'I have nowhere else to go.'
Several more questions later, Milla tired of her inquisition and retired to her room. Galinda escaped her room and descended to the kitchen. A Princess had no reason to enter the servants' quarters. But Galinda wasn't exactly a Princess anymore. She needed to be calmed, and there was only one way of late. The old woman whose mere presence made before-Galinda shiver with annoyance steadied her with her consonants. Galinda stood at the edge of the stone steps, just out of sight, like she had been doing for the last weeks. Until Nanny's voice conjured the forest, lulling her into a pleasant numbness.
"You must get the Princess ready," Crope said. "His Royal Highness insists the Princess dine with the guests. Lady Speakwell is coming with merchants from Paltos."
Her aunt was to be in the castle! Galinda smiled, remembering how her mother's sister laughed like her mother. She was a foot shorter but a mile bolder. She had always admired the woman who had doted and coddled her. What would she be like now? How would she find Galinda?
"She isn't well enough!" Nanny said.
"That isn't for you to decide," Morrible cut in.
"Have you seen her? Her Royal Highness's face could scare a lady to miscarry!" Nanny said.
"The King believes she needs to resume her routines. Too much time alone isn't good for her," Morrible said.
"She needs rest," Nanny insisted.
"You're her servant, Nanny, not her mother. His Majesty knows what's best for her."
…
Avaric shook his head and said, "How would you explain yourself if you were found? It's too dangerous for you to go, and I can't go with you!"
Elphaba snorted, packing her traveling sack, adding a glass jar for the flowers.
"I didn't ask you too."
Avaric threw up his hands.
"Elphaba, are you trying to get arrested?"
She shrugged. What else should she do? Shrivel up and die alone in the cabin? Her brother was banished. Her sister refused to see her. And Glinda had evaporated.
"Is this some attempt at a reunion?"
Elphaba looked up. She knew he didn't mean Nessa. But how did Avaric know that Glinda was in the castle? As if hearing her thoughts, he said,
"So it's true then. I knew by her accent she was from Runcible. But to think she was royalty."
"Who told you?"
"I overheard Shell speaking to Pfannee. I didn't believe him. To think that you magicked and seduced the Princess of Runcible!" He said.
Seduction felt beyond her capabilities but considering all that transpired between the two women, Elphaba said,
"She wasn't the Princess."
Avaric flicked his wrist, beckoning Elphaba to continue.
She sighed. What use were her last secrets now?
"The Princess—as I've said—well—she was the one who forced my brother and I to…"
Avaric's mouth opened.
"So I made a wish to a forest fairy godmother to repay her. The Princess arrived on our doorstep, or should I say, in our barn, without a memory of herself."
Avaric's eyes grew wide with understanding. What Elphaba had not been ready to say, Avaric concluded:
"Glinda was your revenge…"
She retreated to sarcasm.
"Yes, but since all the fun is over. I'm resuming my role as spinster of the forest." That was until she found her sister's medicine.
"It doesn't make sense."
"You, too, find fairy godmothers implausible?" she asked, tired of the topic.
He remained unswayed.
"You loved her. I know you did. Even you aren't that good of a performer."
Elphaba rolled her eyes.
"But if Galinda did those things, how could you? How could you love her?"
Why must she always repeat herself?
"Because Glinda wasn't Galinda, not at all, not even a little!" Elphaba said, too annoyed to hear that Avaric had been asking for himself.
…
There must be worse things, but Galinda couldn't think of any. Her aunt shocked her. The beginning had been nice, almost. Lady Speakwell descended from her carriage, in her thick egg-yolk yellow dress, her powered and wrinkled bosom hefted high. Lifting Glinda's chin, her aunt had hemmed and hawed as she examined Galinda's face in the entryway.
"My little dearest, you're the image of your mother, doe-eyed and red-lipped. Now I must hear everything about you and that dreadful illness you've had for so long."
Galinda, feigning a smile, walked her aunt, her aunt's two daughters, their husbands and their children, and her aunt's one unmarried son Tibbett into their guest suites. Her aunt wrapping her in compliments and care made Galinda feel like a little girl again, surrounded by her mother's people with whom she always felt at ease. Until Nanny entered and offered to show the children to the playroom.
"Absolutely not!" Lady Speakwell said, wedging herself between Nanny and her grandchildren, clutching them tightly as if Nanny might pluck and eat one. "Tell that creature to keep away from the children!"
Creature? Nanny stood there shocked stiff. Galinda came closer, putting an arm around the old woman and said,
"Auntie, you can't be referring to Nanny. You must remember that she's been with us since I was a child."
Nanny glanced up, apparently surprised at Galinda's defense waged on her behalf.
"You mustn't underestimate them, my precious Galinda. No matter how long you've known them. They're a wicked, deceiving people."
Galinda felt stung. As if she had seen a ghost, a shadow of her old self.
Nanny cleared her throat and asked to be excused.
Galinda nodded, mutely.
Her aunt did not speak on Munchkinlanders for the rest of the morning, and Galinda told herself that it was a slip. Her aunt must be tired, perhaps confused. She was getting older. Surely the woman who was so tender to her, couldn't be as bigoted as she sounded. But whatever thin layer of niceties that sustained them through lunch were wholly inadequate by dinnertime.
Lady Speakwell leaned in and sniffed. The table—adorned with famous Gillikinese delicacies: apple-smoked hog, veal breast, peacock pate, roasted pheasant, purple potato mash, and pomegranate wine—made Galinda think of the Munchkin's dance. In the face of the war's defeat, the Weavers had managed a feast. She missed the Munchkin flavors, their spiced rice, nutmeg milk, and vegetables. She smiled to herself, remembering the way Elphie carried her in her arms that night.
"Potatoes, Your Royal Highness?" a servant asked, about to serve her.
"No, no potatoes!," Galinda said. There were some things about the cabin she did not miss at all.
Galinda's plate was stacked with meats. Her appetite had shifted of late from ever-present nausea to a voracious insatiability, but when her aunt moved the conversation to the topic of Munchkinlander migration, she could barely swallow a morsel. "On Oz's name, I swear I see more of them wherever I go," her aunt continued. "And to think, there's even one in this castle! Why should any of them reside here and leech off the royal family? They shouldn't be anywhere near Galinda, especially since her illness. "
Galinda felt cold, like sticky clay. The craven Gillikinese. She realized it now. To spend a lifetime as monsters, required a special kind of delusion. Her people who refused the humanity of Munchkinlanders were not some victims of a passive unknowing. No, theirs was a willful and active self-deception. Just like hers had been. As she drank from her goblet, listening to her aunt's calls to eradicate the Munchkinlanders, exterminating them or expelling them, Galinda saw her people as Glinda had—horrifying beasts, self-deceiving, small-hearted wretches. When had the Gillikinese people turned this small? Had their conquests done this to them? Missions of appetite, cupidity, and bloodshed. Spun as glorious projects for the Unnamed God, enterprises for the beauty of Oz. Was it this lie that fed their delusional belief in their superiority, that made them impervious to self-reflection?
But what about Miss Clutch, Milla, Avaric, and even Glinda? Not all the Gillikinese were monsters? She glanced at Milla beside her. The girl seemed to be uncomfortably absorbed in a piece of meat, shuffling it here and there on her plate.
"They have no place with us. They're beasts in attitude and habits. Dirty little monsters, they deserve…" Lady Speakwell continued.
The phrase struck Galinda, sending a chill up her belly. She could hear no more of her Aunt's incontinent mouth. She felt full, whether with guilt, anger, or disgust, she couldn't say. She had to leave, but how? One did not rise before dinner finished, and one certainly did not rise in the middle of her aunt's monologue. But hadn't Elphaba been brave enough to respond to Sir Chuffery in this very hall? If a Munchkinlander servant had the courage to refute a Gillikinese noble, Galinda could muster the strength to stand and excuse herself.
"Galinda!" She heard her father call, "Your aunt is speaking."
Milla glanced up at her as if she were unwell. She could not be well. Not when this idiotic drivel is what led to the ruin of the Munchkinlanders. She had meant to make up a dull excuse and quietly make her way up to her room. Instead, as all eyes were on her, making her cheeks grow hot, she burst,
"Nonsense! It's all nonsense!"
Inhales sounded.
"Galinda!" Her father called, rising to a shaky stand at the other end of the table.
"Honestly! What's gotten into you, my dear?" Her aunt called.
"Honestly, Aunt Speakwell, we have only ourselves to blame. If we wanted fewer Munchkinlanders in Gillikin, it would have been wise to not have bombed them out of their country."
"Galinda, my love—you can't mean to say that their character is our fault—"
"I mean nothing of the sort. I mean their condition is our doing. Their character is far superior to ours. We ought to be grateful, that after all we've done, they don't rise up and kill us in our sleep!"
"Galinda! Apologize for your vulgarities and go to your chamber!" Her father yelled, teetering, spit flying, both hands on the table closing into fists.
"I apologize for her sensitivity to the truth, an affliction shared by too many of us Gillikinese!"
Before her father could raise his voice again or notice her tears teaming, Galinda ran out of the hall, hearing her father say,
"Please forgive my daughter, Lady Speakwell, she's still recovering from her illness."
She did not return to her room, despite the strict orders her father had given her to remain inside after sunset.
She ran to the gardens, to the southern Pink Pavilion, to be enclosed by its wall of oracles and comforted by her favorite gray bench. When she entered, she remembered Shell. They had met here before their night. He had been asking about Nessa, she realized. She had been terrified at the thought of Nessa's disease. She stared at her feet. What a fool she had been.
Disgusted with herself, she turned from the bench and came face-to-face with her favorite wall, lit by the hanging lantern. Her grandmother, a blonde woman kneeling beside a discolored maiden. Wait! Was the discoloration green? Galinda had always thought the young woman gray, but upon closer inspection, she saw specks of emerald. The painting had faded. But in its original state, the figure would have looked like…Elphaba? In that case, who was the blonde woman? She looked to the next picture: The two women were dancing, surrounded by short people that Galinda had assumed were children…except did two of the children have beards? Galinda peered closely at it. Were they Munchkinlanders? Galinda would have never assumed Munchkinlanders could be painted on any wall in Gillikin. The next painting: Two women were reading in a cabin kitchen. The next one: The green woman kneeled in a field alone. The next: The green woman was being grabbed by a sheriff. Next: The two women stood in the castle side by side. The last one: The blonde woman waved goodbye to the green woman who was leaving by carriage.
What did these pictures mean? Had grief and unabated hunger made Galinda delusional? Before she could study them any further, her father's voice made her wince.
"Galinda! You are not allowed outside at night! Why must you always disobey me?" She turned to apologize but instead was muted by her father's familiar slap. Then another and another. Until she couldn't catch her breath. Until she couldn't see. Until she wasn't standing.
…
Elphaba walked through the leaves of her memories, hearing Glinda's laughter in the early winter breeze, her smiling face in the shadows of the woods. Today would be her last day. She placed her farewell letter to Avaric by the kitchen window. Leaving the cabin, she closed the front door, her hand lingering on the handle. She had opened this door with her brother. She recalled the blisters on her hands. She remembered how Nessa shook as she carried her inside. How Glinda shook in her arms.
"Glinda," she whispered. When would that name mean only a name and not everything she lost? "Goodbye, my sweet."
…
Galinda sat in the carriage with her father. Her bruises too many and too dark to be hidden by powders. She turned toward the window. Had he punished her more than he intended? Why else was he apologizing? A first for her father. He apologized not in words, of course. Rather, he offered Galinda a carriage ride to fields beyond the edge of the castle for sunlight and a picnic. He pressed Galinda to invite Milla. She refused. Milla could never see her with these swollen lips and discolorations. As they rode, Galinda didn't say a word.
"Your aunt returns this morning to the Pertha Hills. She says you did not come down for breakfast."
Her old self would have apologized. That's what her father expected, but Galinda could not muster the facade. She blinked and continued to stare, blankly, watching the townspeople pass by outside, as the castle gates came into view. "She leaves Tibbitt with us for a season," her father added, his tone shifting from reprimand to placation. Galinda felt no joy. What use were guests whom she never wanted to speak with, no matter how she looked?
Her father tried several more times to speak to Galinda, but she kept firm in her silence, watching the people thin, the hills emerge, and the edge of the forest come near.
That's when Galinda spotted her.
She gasped. Her heart zick-zicking. That mantle. It couldn't be. There up far ahead of them was a hooded figure, picking flowers—picking with a green hand. Riding toward the figure from the forest was another person she knew: the Sheriff. Galinda's heart sunk in her belly as he dismounted beside the hooded woman. The figure turned to face him but kept her head bowed. Galinda couldn't hear their conversation, but the woman's stance tightened. She dropped her jar of flowers. Her hands clung to her dress. The Sheriff yelled, leaning toward her, and the woman raised her head, her hood falling back to reveal her face.
"Elphie!" Galinda yelped, making her father jump beside her.
"Elphie?" her father said. "Who?" Puzzled, he looked out the window, "Oh, your old handmaid!"
The Sheriff had fallen back from shock, but he recovered quickly, brandishing his sword.
"Help her father! Please. You must help!" Galinda shouted as the Sheriff took a step forward. Elphaba raised a pair of crossed arms in front of herself.
Her father rapped on the royal carriage door. It stopped beside them. The Sheriff stilled at the sight. Her father stepped out, and the Sheriff fell to a bended knee. Elphaba's eyes widened. She followed with a low bow. Her father struck the Sheriff against the back of his head, yelling at him.
Galinda was not prepared. Watching her father usher Elphaba into their carriage, commanding her to ride with them. Galinda felt naked. After all these months, after all her work to forget Elphaba, the woman sat less than two feet away. She felt Elphaba's eyes on her. Not like this. No, Elphaba. Don't look. Please don't look at me. Not with this face. Not with all that's happened.
Galinda committed her gaze to the window while her father said the unimaginable.
"If you have no work permit, Elphaba, you must resume your post as a handmaiden to my daughter."
A/N: It's been a long time. I've missed you all. As you can see, I have not given up on this story. Many thanks to those of you still reading it and commenting. Until the next update, I hope you all keep safe and take good care.
