Author's Note: Once again there is a major hurricane heading for me. Please, please, please send it go-away-turn-to-the-north vibes! I don't think I can take another week without power…At least there are no trees left to fall on my house. Yeah. Anywho. I'm posting now, and hopefully I'll have another chance to update before this weekend, but just in case I don't, if I suddenly go silent it's cuz I'm without power.
Lindsay: yeah, I've been there too…that's why it scared me so much after I wrote it. Not to mention this one.
WARNING: This chapter gets quite a bit graphic toward the end. If you're really really squeamish, consider yourself warned.
Chapter 35
Eleven days after Yackle's visit, there was another knock at the door of the Resistance headquarters. Boq, who had been dozing with his back to the wall in the main hall jumped awake at the sound of the knock, nearly hitting his head on a nearby bench. He wasn't sure how he knew, but he had a feeling of excitement as he got to his feet and went to answer the door.
"Glinda!" cried Boq, for she was also asleep near the fire as it was too cold to sleep elsewhere in the building. She didn't stir, so he went over to her and took hold of her shoulders, shaking her gently. She mumbled something about Saffron Cream in her sleep and turned over. "Wake up!" shouted Boq. The knocking was getting louder. Glinda woke with a start and clawed Boq in the face. He jumped away and she fell off the bench she had been lying on.
"What?" she snapped, attempting to smooth her skirts which were now worn and soiled beyond repair.
"There's someone at the door."
Glinda looked lost.
"I don't see what…oh!" Glinda grabbed Boq's hand and dragged him toward the door, suddenly realizing what he meant.
They stopped behind the old wooden door, hesitating for a moment, looking at one another. They didn't really have the authority to let anyone in, for there was always the risk that they could be discovered and the person on the other side of the door was an enemy. But Nor was busy debriefing one of the other scouting teams that had just returned, and Boq was not eager to let whoever it was stand outside and vulnerable while he went to fetch her. Neither of them was tall enough to look out the peephole in the door.
"Do you think…?" said Boq uncertainly.
Glinda shrugged, but she looked just as eager as he felt.
"I'm going to do it," he said finally, trying to keep the tremor out of his voice.
Glinda nodded.
"All right, do it."
Boq tried to pull up the large board that served as a bolt on the door, but it was too heavy for him. Luckily, Glinda came to his assistance and together they managed to move the huge thing. In the dingy outer room stood a wet and bedraggled looking Liir, and Elphaba, who had her cloak pulled up all the way over her head so that it was nearly impossible to make out her face. Boq's heart sank at the sight of them.
"What—" he started to ask, but Glinda interrupted.
"Come in, come in, you must be freezing, I had no idea it had gotten that cold out there!" Her voice took on the perky high-pitched tone Boq recognized as cleverly concealed panic.
Elphaba pushed past them without a word and disappeared down the stairs into the tunnels below. Boq stared after her for a moment, then turned to Liir. With a sick fascination he realized that he wanted to ask the boy what had happened, though he was nearly certain that he already knew. Glinda gave Boq a look that told him to keep silent, then she, too turned to Liir.
The boy stood staring at her for a moment, then stumbled to Glinda and buried his face in her shoulder, sobbing uncontrollably.
Elphaba slammed the door of her room behind her, glad at least that it had been left untouched and not given to some other renegade traveler who happened to appear in her absence. She went over to the bed and sat down, shucking her wet cloak to the floor. She looked around for a moment, almost as if subconsciously trying to find something to distract her from her task.
The room was completely bare.
Elphaba pulled the knife from the top of her boot and laid back on the bed, slowly, laboriously examining the skin of her inner forearms. She could almost see the blood pulsing through her veins, but then maybe she was becoming delusional. It was almost as if her skin had suddenly become thinner.
Stop stalling, she told herself sternly. This is what you've wanted for the past sixteen years. Cut vertically, along the vein. It goes faster that way.
It wasn't the pain she was afraid of, not really. Nothing could be more torturous than the emotional pain she was already afflicted with. Still, what if there was no release?
Images of the Wizard being spat upon the banks of the mystical sea came up from the depths of her memory, fragments of a long forgotten dream. Elphaba shuddered.
She held her right hand up over her head and pressed the knife blade against the skin of her wrist with her left. This would be the easy part. Slowly, precisely, she pulled the blade down toward her elbow, watching the line of red boil up and over on her arm until the blood was dripping, spattering onto the graying bed sheets and her legs were sticky with it. Then she reversed hands and repeated the process, satisfaction filling her for the first time in weeks.
Elphaba rolled onto her side and curled up in a little ball of raging emotions. She closed her eyes, giving herself to the darkness, her heart swelling with hope for what seemed like the first time.
"Not so fast, Dearie, not so easy as all that," came the familiar old voice.
Elphaba jumped, her eyes snapping open. Her entire body was on fire, throbbing, pulsing with all-consuming pain. She was lying down, but no longer on the bed in the abandoned flower shop.
"Wh—" but she broke off as her gag reflex kicked in and she wretched onto the floor as she suddenly realized where she was. She was on a bed, her bed, in the room above the corn exchange. And the blood she was covered in was not her own. It was Fiyero's.
Yackle laughed maniacally. She was standing directly under the shattered skylight, the full moon beaming down on her, giving her a ghostly glow.
Elphaba forced herself into a sitting position and coughed, choking on bile.
"Stop! STOP! Why are you doing this to me? All I want is for all of this to go away!"
"That, my pet, is the problem," crooned Yackle. "A body cannot die unless the soul is first released. Mother Yackle has taken your soul."
"Let me die!" begged Elphaba, tears streaming down her cheeks. She couldn't feel them. The pain was already too great.
Yackle grinned.
"Not yet, my poppet. When you have earned your time, then, then you may rest."
Yackle raised her hands in a dismissive flourish and Elphaba was knocked back onto the bed with the force of a blow.
She woke drenched in a painful cold sweat. All was quiet outside the door to the little room, so it must be late at night.
Elphaba sat up in bed and examined her wrists.
The emerald skin was utterly untouched.
The knife was gone.
Review please!
