7. Wicked
Melena knows nothing if not the value of silence.
She's been what guests call a private person for nearly eighteen years now, guarding her happiness close, her unhappiness closer, and rarely volunteering glimpses into her inner life. It's a development that would appall teenage Melena, who loathed anything resembling meekness, but the Melena with twice as much pretense under her belt cannot expect herself to throw open the doors and usher strangers inside – not when she lacks the energy to so much as lift the key. Conversation is tolling, confrontation is easily prevented, and so she's trained herself to nod, to acquiesce, to ensure that her thoughts remain thoughts and to bear her problems alone.
This entails a good deal of fortitude, more than she gives herself credit for, but also a good deal of distracted blundering when something is wrong.
And something is wrong.
It is not the solitary dread of bleeding two weeks late, of having a reminder of her precarious position handed to her by a tiny ball of cells that may or may not exist (and thankfully does not in the end). It is not a visit from her father as he ambles his way to the hot springs at Mount Runcible, when he stays on an extra week to criticize her until she feels smaller than that tiny ball of cells that does not exist. Nor is it the piercing glares from Frex when she falls mysteriously ill before dinner with the Ixian minister who refers to Elphaba as the Wizard's laughable excuse for an heir or her enduring feud with the new gardener or a stain on her favourite gown.
This is a wrong that is outside of herself, beyond her control, beyond the tempering powers of time and patience, because it has been over three weeks since Nessa last wrote.
Initially, Melena blames it on the post, for the service has always been of dubious quality. It contends with inclement weather, with distance, with out-and-out incompetence, so she supposes it's really a wonder that the letters reach Colwen Grounds at all. But this does not make it any less grating when four of them are tipped into her lap after a week of anxious forbearance – or perhaps a week and a half, possibly two. She struggles to calculate the longest period of time that lapsed without an update from Nessa, but it certainly did not stretch into this range, and Melena cannot evade her fears as the walls close in a little more each day.
She will not consult Frex. Not yet.
Instead, she continues writing, each outgoing letter a little more frantic. She attaches extra stamps, though she knows that is not the issue, and ventures into town to submit them in person. When the porter presents the daily pile of envelopes on a silver tray, she stares intently while Frex surveys each one, waiting for him to make some passing comment on Nessa's absent voice, but he merely grunts a few curses because bloody Bfee is running Appleton into the ground and motions for her to pass the butter.
Melena does not want to push. She is aware of the pressures that are slowly crushing the life out of him from all sides; she discerns it in the lines on his face, the frustration in his voice, and even feels it herself as a sort of pall that sits over the roof, but addressing it would only make things worse. A severe winter has delayed the few crops that it didn't damage. A drought in the Vinkus is preventing supplementation of the dwindling food stores. Trade with Gillikin is at a standstill. There's news of some Animal-run terrorist group, the crimes it has spawned in the last few months, and the fallout that is brutal and occasionally bloody: the bans, the arrests, the experiments. Frex has no desire to condone the Wizard's restrictions against Animal citizens, but there are spies on his council and no telling who – Melena often listens at the doors of his private meetings – and not complying could prove dire, what with the Yellow Brick Road linking the doors of that gaudy green palace to theirs and Nessa so far from home.
All of this, however, does not explain why Frex is curbing guests when they veer towards certain subjects, why he receives his newspapers in his study, why the man who at one time could not endure separation from Nessa for three days is blindly tolerant of the delay. Melena assesses this behaviour and cannot help the suspicions that creep into her thoughts like ivy, weaving through their every interaction until she finds him insufferable for the first time in years. She reads the highs and lows of his silences, the sneers, the avoidance, and she knows that the anger simmering beneath the surface of it all is telling him that to deprive her of answers is to deprive her of dignity.
This proves a successful technique. Melena, chagrined by his ability to worm under her skin after all this time, is driven further into her own reticence by her determination to prove him wrong.
Arming herself with Nessa's last five letters, she plants herself in the parlour, at her desk, and splays them across the surface. She hunches over the loose sheets for hours, reading the lines and the spaces between, marvelling at how isolated a mere signature can make her feel when the person behind the pen that inked it is so far away, and then analyzing what is available.
There is nothing to indicate that Nessa is upset with her (even so, she has a history of flaunting her affection for Frex in such scenarios) and nothing to foreshadow Nessa coming to any harm. The first is perhaps the least relevant, documenting her war with a particularly grueling assignment – a 1% penalty is practically an invitation to hand it in late anyway – and the two that follow extol Boq's virtues until Melena is queasy enough to consider abandoning her task.
The fourth is a little more troubling: it describes an outburst during history class, one that Melena judged typical of Elphaba at the time of her first reading, but which hollows her out as she tackles it again. Only Elphaba's name is brought in; Nessa neglects to mention which history professor was arrested, but Melena knows in her bones that it was Doctor Dillamond.
The last letter coincides with the day that Elphaba left for the Emerald City, for Nessa explains that she intends to post it after accompanying Elphaba and Galinda to the station. It worries Nessa some, the prospect of Elphaba's absence, but she is confident that she'll be able to manage until they return – with Boq's help, of course. And then she writes:
I'm still not sure what Elphaba is hoping to accomplish.
This is the point at which Melena walks away. Something in her chest wrings, but she breathes deeply, convincing herself to stand firm while the world slowly tilts beneath her feet. Her ears get keener and her steps quieter, fuelled by the nagging prospects that flock into the gaps in the narrative, each building on the most alarming aspects of its predecessor.
"I hear that letters from Shiz are being heavily censored," one voice says. "Perhaps your daughter wrote something of a sensitive nature." Melena rests her temple against the door, thinking. "Distance is what I prescribe. Distance and caution."
After this exchange, Frex invites more of his colleagues, appealing to them for ideas, but the miracle he is waiting for proves elusive and the discussions end up breeding more problems than they solve. They speak of famine, of unrest among the Quadlings, of an Animal Resistance that is either strengthening or quashed into submission depending on the man behind the rumour. They speak, Melena realizes, of the types of calamities that have bookended each regime, toppling one and ushering in the next.
Elphaba taught her this in one of their discussions this past summer.
Melena thinks of her often, inventing different versions of the trip to the Emerald City without a shred of evidence to ground them on. She begins to associate it with Nessa's silence. The two are correlated, she knows, and she is proven right when a deluge of letters arrives, though they oblige her fears to congregate around the conditions at Shiz once again. Nessa's letters are heavily modified; whole lines blacked out until they are beyond understanding. One of them is torn away completely mid-page. Another is bent diagonally. Melena runs the pad of her finger over the blocks of nothing, as if to absorb her daughter's distorted words, but she is limited to the one line she can make out: Glinda won't tell us what happened in the Emerald City.
"Glinda?" Melena mutters, followed by: "What happened in the Emerald City?"
Frex glances up from the letter that he is trying to decipher, their eyes meeting across the table, and Melena feels a sickening pull in her gut as it occurs to her that he knows exactly what happened. She does not bother asking, for it will be futile, it is always futile, especially when he is so uncontrollably livid over the way that Nessa's letters have been handled. He wastes no time in writing to Madame Morrible, only to find that she has been promoted to an advising position with the Wizard, and her replacement is either powerless, incompetent or a potent combination of the two.
Everyone, it seems, is a potent combination of the two, and the Thropps' mutual desperation fosters a brief reconnection. They scramble into action, verging on an expedition to Gillikin, but their plans are brought to a screeching halt when Nessa sends Melena a small gift-box with a tag that reads: The pair of gloves you had your eye on.
Melena is bewildered, but she pulls the soft leather over her fingers and feels paper crunch against her palm. Nearly tearing it in the process, she unravels the letter and thinks herself about to drop as her eyes devour the fresh signature, the words that have been messily strung together in haste, the new questions they rip open. Nessa restates her frustration with Glinda's partial renditions of the story and mentions that they are taken into frequent interrogations: alone, together, drilled over and over, each detail picked apart until it doesn't feel like anything that's happened in her lifetime.
We've had no word from Elphaba, she writes. I can't stand it here. Please let me come home.
Melena does not know which half strikes with greater force, only that it picks her battle and spurs her headlong through the front that she has cultivated so carefully, right to Frex's study, where he is labouring over a report. He glances up with annoyance, as if she is no more than a fly that's gotten in through the window, and she quails in her shoes, but presses on.
"Why is Nessa being questioned?" she says angrily. "Why are the letters being censored?" He leaves her in desperate suspension and her vehemence only builds, so she says, "Nessa is coming home."
"Nessa will stay in school and finish her degree," he says flatly, "and our lives will go on uninterrupted." He taps his papers into an orderly pile and merges them into another set of documents.
"Have you no concern for your daughter? She's begging."
He slides his glasses up his nose and meets her eyes briefly. "I have every concern for Nessa. We've had word from her. She's safe—"
"Hardly," Melena scoffs. "They spring interrogations on her without a moment's notice. Suppose she says the wrong thing and ends up detained – what then?"
The portrait is abstract – shapes and shadows – but painted with just enough clarity to strike a nerve. His lips purse, closing on words, and he scowls before he turns away. "If I recall correctly, you were the one who advocated for Nessa to go to Shiz in the first place."
"A decision I don't regret," Melena says. "Her first year there was the happiest of her life."
"And how does the current year rank?"
"Only because she doesn't feel comfortable without Elphaba. If we can bring her home until this is sorted out and Elphaba is back at school…"
Frex studies her through a lens of weariness, as if she is boring him. "You did well by Nessa for a time," he says, "and better than I expected at that, but you will no longer be party to any of the decisions regarding her schooling or her future."
"Elphaba was her closest friend," Melena says.
"Her sister, you mean," he says, and Melena's breath catches in her throat. It's been an unspoken secret all these years, and one that she's considered only herself privy to. Hearing him render it so clinically makes blood swish hot and loud in her ears.
She curls her lip. "That is none of your—"
"You're too sentimental for your own good, Melena," he says. "It's gotten tiresome."
Melena's eyes widen and she makes no reply, because she is shocked by the allegation and even more so by the voice in the back of her mind that goes perhaps he's right. But no, he's not, because she has fucked her way through his most elite circles and hasn't given a second thought to any of them, because she doesn't lament the fact that she can't remember her mother's face, because she's never bought into that old romance of family: the so-called sanctity of marriage, of parenthood, of home. Whatever it is that drives her, whatever she was feeling on the platform as the train sped away with Elphaba and Nessa aboard, it's more complicated than sentimentality and she hates him for belittling it so.
"Nessarose will stay in school and make suitable friends," Frex says, "and that is my final decision. There will be no more entertaining your whims."
"My whims?" Melena says incredulously, still reeling. "You exiled one of my daughters and crippled the other. Where did my whims enter into that?"
Her muscles go taut. She does not dare lift a finger, because she has just expelled twenty years of closeted blame like a breath that has been festering in her lungs and she is paralyzed with the terror and the exhilaration of it.
For the first time in a long, long while, she feels like herself.
But then Frex rises and that freedom blurs and bursts. She thinks he might strike her, or is at least considering it; the taste on her tongue is of milkflowers. His voice is low and menacing, but filtered as if through reason. He says, "I permitted you to have her here, to satisfy your quaint reunion fantasies. Against my instincts, I permitted it. I watched you cast aside all regard for our daughter—" Melena quivers with rage, "—to pander to…to what? An obnoxious, ill-born freak who had no business under this roof. And now we're inextricably associated with—"
"With what? Associated with what?"
Frex shrinks before her eyes. He is inscrutable again; the taste of milkflowers dissolves into nothing. He aligns the pens on his desk and says, "We will discuss this in the morning."
"I am not a child to be sent to bed with empty promises," she says furiously.
He brushes by her like a gust of air and turns out the lamp. "Then don't behave like a child," he says, "and see to it that Nessa has her reply promptly."
"There must be faster ways to suffocate me," Melena calls after him, but it is futile, it is always futile, and she is not at all surprised when she wakes to the news that the governor will be out on an errand until late in the evening.
Melena foregoes breakfast and immediately sets out penning her response to Nessa, for she can't bear the thought of food any more than she can bear the thought of Nessa swathing herself in layer upon layer of false hope. She packages the disheartening tidings in the form of a belated birthday present – a cheap pair of woolen stockings from the nearest shop. The card enclosed is irreproachable; the letter stuffed into the toe less so. Melena informs Nessa that her father thinks it best that she stay at Shiz for the time being, but that he is slowly being worked over and they intend to spare her another semester on her own. Hold on, my love, she writes, predicting the way the words will ring emptily through Nessa's head as she reconciles herself to more afternoons in the company of an unresponsive Glinda and Boq of the dubious intentions.
This expectation quickly morphs into reality. Nessa takes the non-answer as a definite negative and refuses to ship them any more contraband information. She posts bland letters about the clemency of the weather and the dullness of her readings and then she begins dangling idle threats about remaining at Shiz over the holidays. I might as well if I'm to live in these conditions interminably, she writes, and Melena rolls her eyes, even as guilt churns in her stomach. She persists on her side, trying to coax Nessa out of her sulky silence, but Nessa remains intent on punishing them, and Melena must make do with what she has, unearthing the first plea from the mound of letters in her desk and working to rearrange it into some kind of revelation.
We've had no word from Elphaba, she reads. Boq suspects she never left the EC – he's been such a pillar of strength. Still, I can't believe she would do this. She said to us, "You've been like family to me." And now she's abandoned us for a few Animals she doesn't even know. I can't stand it here. Please let me come home.
Melena reads it upwards of twelve times. She dwells on each sentence individually, narrowing her eyes and varying her position in the manor, as if a physical change will yield a mental one, but she comes up with nothing. It is there, the answer that she is seeking; it lurks just out of sight but it is there, she knows this, and so she crawls into bed with the words gnawing at her like a tired jaw.
It falls into place at dawn.
Abandoned us for a few Animals she doesn't even know.
The sky is bruised purple by the imminent sunrise and Melena flies out of her room, down the stairs, to Frex's study. She topples the chair, flinging back the documents on the desk and wrenching open drawers until she comes across the newspapers that he has been storing.
She draws the pile nearer, sending the issues soaring into the air and onto the floor – a cascade of accumulating days – as she holds her breath and rummages for the articles that lie beneath those she's seen.
Arrest of controversial thinker Reginalf Pantherin. Reforms reach Shiz University; "I shall continue speaking out!" cries conspirator. Violence in Ozma Memorial Park linked to Animal terrorism. Loyal servants of the Wizard mutilated in cold blood.
Melena comes to the last sheaf and her heart stalls. She takes the paper into her hands, squinting through the dim morning light and then dropping it onto the desk, as if it scalds her fingers. Before she reads the headline, she absorbs the dated snapshot below it: a young girl, shy but rapt, at the age of fifteen. Two haunted eyes stare within. Dark eyes. Her eyes.
Elphaba's eyes.
Beware the Wicked Witch of the West.
