I have quoted several lines directly from the book, Wicked, by Gregory Maguire. They will be bolded. Otherwise, this is my interpretation of her end based on Maguire's conception of the Witch…and perhaps beyond.
Prologue: The End
"Oh, will this nightmare never end," screamed Dorothy, and she grabbed at a bucket for collecting rainwater that, in the sudden flare-up of light, had come into view. She said, "I will save you!" and she hurtled the water at the Witch.
An instant of sharp pain before the numbness. The numbness shielded the Witch from the truths of her quickly deteriorating physical state. Droplets of water clung to her green skin and burned through it as easily as acid would wood. Dorothy gasped, stricken at the sight. The water continued its deadly work, eating through the Wicked Witch's tender flesh which charred jade, then black, and curled before falling away like ash. Elphaba's dark, liquid brown eyes rolled back in her head as she lost control of her body and fell heavily to her knees. The girl with the checkered blue and white dress and stolen red shoes tried to shriek in horror but the words were caught in the bile that rose from her stomach at the gory sight of the green woman dying. Horror gripped her as she realized that she was a murderess and that she would never be able to be forgiven for killing the Witch's sister…or the Witch herself.
"Please, no! I didn't know, you must know! I didn't want to kill anybody! I'm sorry," Dorothy cried desperately, shrinking away from the shriveling body but Elphaba heard not a word. The Wicked Witch's skin had now been burned away and the water worked on the delicate webbing of veins and sound musculature.
Dorothy threw up on the cobblestones, gripping her weakening stomach as it emptied.
Elphaba, on the other hand, was oblivious to the terrors and pain that wracked her body as flashbacks of her life played out in her agile mind. Images of her childhood: Melena, her licentious mother; Frex, her zealous father-figure (she didn't want to remember how the Wizard, the truly wicked man who had ruined her life, was really her father); and Turtle Heart, her parents' lover who had made her a glass ball and had been the first to accept the green-skinned girl, despite the fact that she had vicious teeth. Not even her parents had done that.
Her years at Shiz University: she'd met Glinda who ultimately turned on her, thinking more of her popularity than of her old friend. Boq, who was her first true friend and who stayed that way despite her horrid treatment of him. The rest of her friends at Shiz, those who helped her research for her professor and those who didn't care what color her skin happened to be. Dr. Dillamond, the Animal who'd been brutally murdered. And Madame Morrible, who she'd finally "murdered" thirty years after university to capture the wicked Wizard's attention (and for revenge in Dr. Dillamond's name because Elphaba knew Madame Morrible killed him).
The years she spent in hiding in the Emerald City, silently combating the Wizard in a silent, but deadly, terrorist faction, fighting the Wizard who threatened the lifestyles of the sentient Animals (not animals) and the Munchkinlanders who merely wanted independence.
Elphaba's mind then faltered, dreading to relieve the re-appearance of one person into her life and so it skipped, like a record, to her years in the Maunt where she recovered from mysterious injuries and sickness brought about by the loss of that one person before striking out on a journey in search of forgiveness. Pictures of her adventures in Vinkus came to her in flashes: the boy Liir, her faithful dog Killjoy, befriending the elephant princess and finally meeting her lover's wife, Sarima, and his family. From Sarima she desired only one thing: forgiveness.
Then, remembrance of her reunion with her sister Nessa after Elphaba learned to fly on her broom brought only pain as Nessa had become even more religiously fanatical than their father, who'd always preferred Elphaba's armless sister. The cold realization of this truth plagued the Witch who escaped back to Sarima's castle, only to find her and her family captured and gone. She was unable to save them. This fact greatly troubled her although she hid it well. They, too, had become special to the now solitary Wicked Witch and their loss had been another blow to her well-being…and her sanity. She would never get the forgiveness she desired for causing the death of her lover, Sarima's husband.
During the ensuing years she lived only with two people: one of whom was too senile to show any true affection, Nanny, and one who could care less if she lived or died, Liir. She remembered how she'd sunken into herself, her only earthly comfort being her familiars: the dogs, the bees and the monkeys to whom she'd graciously given wings. She'd known that her behavior had become more irrational and erratic, but she didn't care. The world, the Wizard and his vile green potion, and even her own family had turned on her, making her life miserable for reasons she could not fathom and so she turned their back on them.
Her sister's death, by means of a falling house, was merely another shock to the quaking foundation of Elphaba's sanity. The girl, the one who now stood crying and gagging over the hallucinating Witch's writhing and smoking body, had killed her. Unintentionally perhaps, but nonetheless had killed her. To add salt to the would, Glinda, her once faithful friend and roommate, had given the shoes promised to her by the now-deceased sister to the ignorant farmer girl who wore them without realization of their sentimental or political value. And now, by order of the Wizard who had started it all, her miserable life in which she was trapped in green skin, Dorothy was to kill her.
Elphaba knew that the way she'd first treated the girl when she'd breached her castle had been atrocious, but she could hardly bring herself to care because she'd gone mad from the pain of loss. The girl and her friend's had unwittingly killed off her familiars, taking away the last things in her life that she'd come to care for. The Wizard had ordered the deaths of or influenced the deaths of many people in her life and was to be the cause of many more. He'd taken the one person who loved her without a second thought; the one person whose reappearance in her life was too painful to remember; the one person who'd she'd allowed herself to hope was in the ridiculous little girl's party under guise as the scarecrow; the one person who she'd finally accepted as dead, but not before his disappearance all those years ago had finally broken her, leaving her susceptible to all the other ills that befell her at the hand of the wicked Wizard.
'Fiyero… Fiyero, I still love you, you idiot boy, after all these years. I told you to leave when you'd first found me in the EmeraldCity, but you didn't because you loved me. Why did you have to love me? You stayed…and never left. The Wizard had it out for me and I knew he would hurt you if he found you…and he did,' the Witch thought of her lost lover, Sarima's husband. 'It's my fault you're gone. What did I ever do to deserve you? I wish you were here…I miss you. Forgive me.'
And now, as the water like acid ate through the last of her pink, bloody muscles the Wicked Witch of the West snapped back to reality, briefly, her dark eye (for the other had already crumbled in its socket, decimated by the water) focusing on the pathetic sight before her, she felt pity for the girl just as the girl felt for her. If she'd had the strength, or the muscles with which to perform the task, she would have laughed at the irony of the situation: both of them desired forgiveness, and neither would ever get it. She felt hollow, as she had for a long time, but now her physical state mirrored it as her insides dissolved under the power of the water leaving her ribs protecting nothing but air. Then, they too collapsed.
'Such is life. I'm glad for the end,' the Witch thought sadly as she felt the firm grip of death upon her before slipping away into the warm arms of the Goddess who carried her soul (for the Witch did have one, despite her doubts) to the heavens. Her life in Oz had ended, brutally and painfully, but her soul would go on although she hadn't wanted it to. The pain of one life, she'd thought, was enough to last for an eternity and she didn't want the guarantee of eternal life that possessing a soul gave. Another wish of the Witch's gone awry.
Dorothy watched in terror, the bile once again rising in her raw throat as the naked eye of the Wicked Witch whom she'd been sent to kill, focused on her, terrible and beautiful all at once. The pain of her life was apparent in that one last, bitter and laughing gaze. Then the Witch crumbled into ash like a log on a fire, leaving only the hat that she wore which would later become a symbol of the Witch's wickedness. But Dorothy knew better. She could see that the Wicked Witch of the West was not who she seemed, but she would never be able to prove it, nor know the truth of her life.
"Elphaba!" Liir cried as he, the Lion and the irritating Toto barreled into the room. He rushed towards the pile of ashes which had begun to blow away in the wind of the cold, dank tower. He glanced wide-eyed with horror from the pointy black hat to Dorothy and back.
"She's dead?!"
"I'm sorry. I didn't mean to. I was just trying to put the fire out," Dorothy breathed hoarsely as her stomach lurched again.
'The Witch had a name! A name! Elphaba…Elphaba…What have I done?!' Dorothy thought desperately, clawing at her eyes. 'I'm sorry, Elphaba!'
Liir stared at the remains of the Witch with mixed feelings. She'd never been particularly kind to him, but neither had she neglected him. Her death troubled him, but he put it behind him.
"She'll be happier this way. She was a miserable creature. Her life had driven her mad, obviously. I'm glad I wasn't her," Liir announced before taking Dorothy's hand and leading her back to the Emerald City, but not before she grabbed a green vial off the shelf to show proof that she'd been to the Witch's castle. What she didn't know was that the vial and the Wizard had begun the bittersweet (mostly bitter) life of the Wicked Witch of the West whose life was now mercifully over.
The Witch's life story ends here. It is over and done with and in Oz, the only thing that lived was the warped stories of her life. But it no longer concerned her. The Wicked Witch is dead.
In the life of a Witch, there is no after, in the ever after of a Witch, there is no happily; in the story of a Witch, there is no afterword. Of that part that is beyond the life story, beyond the story of the life, there is –alas, or perhaps thank mercy—no telling. She was dead, dead and gone, and all that was left of her was the carapace of her reputation for malice.
Ok, this is my first fanfic. I normally write on fictionpress but I really loved this book and needed to find answers to the many unanswered questions Maguire left at the end of it. Soooo, I made them up. :-D. Whether they are what he intended or not, I dunno, but they make me happy. Enjoy and lemme know what you think!
Lisa