Elphaba raced up the stairs, feelings pounding in her head like storm surge from a terrible hurricane. Monkeys screaming, the great clanking of the Oz head, the Wizard's voice echoing: 'That's why I need you' over and over. Another flight. Higher. Higher! She barely noticed another pair of footsteps below her, clicking with each step. Not guards, then. At least, not yet.
A solitary door, beaten with age, stood at the top of the stairs. Elphaba rushed the last few steps, skipping a few, and burst through the door into another room. It was filled with dusty boxes and old blankets, as if nothing had been there for years. Darkness pooled in the old room, disturbed by the last rays of sunlight from the rapidly setting sun.
"Elphie, wait! Where are you going?" Glinda whined from the stairwell, following her friend into the old room.
"Oh no…" Elphaba searched around her, her instinct to go higher, high above the guards and winged Monkeys and the Wizard. How could he deceive her like that?! "There are no more stairs! This must be an attic…" As the realization set in that she had nowhere to go, she knew she needed to buy herself some time.
"Elphaba, listen to me..." Glinda began as her best friend began searching the room. Elphaba had screwed everything up by running off like that! She probably won't get the job, they'll both be locked up in some prison…
"Barricade the door!" Elphaba responded wildly, producing an old sweeping broom from behind a large trunk. This'll do it!
"Elphaba, why couldn't you have stayed calm for once instead of flying off the handle?" Glinda stamped her foot angrily, ashamed at her friend's behavior. "I hope you're happy!" She spat sarcastically. "I hope you're happy now! I hope you're happy how you hurt your cause forever!" Elphaba finally looked up, the broom wedged under the door handle. "I hope you think you're clever!" Elphaba stood to her full height, towering over Glinda.
"I hope you're happy!" she said with equal venom. "I hope you're happy too! I hope you're proud how you would grovel in submission to feed your own ambition!" Glinda fumed. It's not like she wanted to be with the Wizard the way Elphaba did; she just knew that running off like she this wasn't the right thing to do.
"So though I can't imagine how, I hope you're happy right now!" The two turned their backs on each other, Elphaba facing the lone window.
"Citizens of Oz!" An amplified voice called out from somewhere below them. Elphaba looked down to a balcony occupied by Madame Morrible. She was addressing a growing crowd, passers-by stopping to wonder what all the commotion was about.
"There is an enemy that must be found and captured! Believe nothing she says. She's evil. Responsible for the mutilation of these poor, innocent monkeys!" Madame Morrible played to the reaction of the crowd. Horror, disgust, and shock mixing into the air. Elphaba's breath caught. It was her. They were turning Oz against her! She barely noticed Glinda join her at the window, looking down on Madame Morrible and the Ozians.
"Her green skin is but an outward manifestation of her twisted nature! This distortion... this repulsion... this... Wicked Witch!" Shouts from the crowd almost drowned out Madame Morrible's horrific last words, innocent shoppers they may have seen earlier that day turned into people in a mob, stirred against Elphaba with only the word of their leader telling them this is the right thing. The best thing. The only thing.
Something rational took over Elphaba, a kind of reason in the face of panic. She could set this right. The mute Monkeys, the Ox and Owl Dr. Dillamond told her about, they needed someone to oppose the Wizard and end this once and for all. She was the only one who could do this. Glancing in the corner, she noticed the Grimmerie, lying discarded in her earlier panic to barricade the door. She had the power to help them, but the first thing she needed was escape. Could she jump out the window, make a kind of glider with the fabric up here? No, she couldn't drop. She needed to fly…
"Don't be afraid," Glinda said, holding on to her friend's arm, her voice shaking from her own fear.
"I'm not," Elphaba said simply, her own voice level and steady as she accepted what she knew she had to do. "It's the Wizard who should be afraid…Of me." Glinda's fingers tightened around Elphaba's arm as Glinda started to understand Elphaba's decision.
"Elphie! Listen to me! Just…say you're sorry. Before it's too late." Glinda tried to make Elphaba look at her, but the green girl remained steady, staring at the mob beginning to disperse into search parties to find her. "You can still be with the Wizard, what you've worked and waited for…" Elphaba pulled away from Glinda, taking a few steps toward the Grimmerie. "You're leaving all you ever wanted!" She warned as Elphaba stared at the book, the dangerous key to solving this problem.
"I know," She looked back to Glinda. "But I don't want it…no," She wanted it desperately, more than she ever wanted anything else. "I can't want it anymore," The Monkeys needed her, all the Animals being placed in cages, needed her.
"Something has changed within me, something is not the same." Eyes wide, Glinda stared at her friend. Was this the Elphaba she spent the day in the City with? Relaxed, happy, joyful, even? What happened to the Elphaba that nothing bad could ever happen to?
"I'm through with playing by the rules of someone else's game." Elphaba looked down at the floor, as if trying to see the Wizard through the floor and curse him for ever doing such horrendous things to Animals.
"Too late for second guessing, too late to go back to sleep." She looked out the window again. Few people were left below the balcony. How could she get out of this tower and make it alive, or freely? "It's time to trust my instincts, close my eyes and leap…" She finally bent down and picked up the Grimmerie, she could feel power flowing through its ancient covers, begging to be used.
"It's time to try defying gravity...I think I'll try defying gravity," Gravity has always been the enemy, falling was her weakness. The Wizard kept her down on the ground, yet it was he who told her to fly, the hypocrite. She would show him. "and you can't pull me down." Fear of what was going to happed to Elphaba if she continued flooded Glinda. They would find her, hunt her, imprison her…
…maybe even kill her. She had to talk Elphaba out of it, do something to help!
"Can't I make you understand?" Glinda grabbed Elphaba by the shoulders. Elphaba stayed collected the whole time, dark eyes meeting Glinda's pensively. "You're having delusions of grandeur!" Elphaba turned away, shaking off her friend's grip.
"I'm through accepting limits, 'cuz someone says they're so," Elphaba glanced out the window again to where Madame Morrible had stood moments before, declaring to the world Elphaba was their enemy, and they should trust in the Wizard.
"Some things I cannot change, but 'til I try I'll never know." Sorry for the poor, misguided people she had once been one of, she started pacing, trying to find if there was another way to get out of this Ozforsaken tower.
"Too long I've been afraid of losing the love I just lost," Elphaba thought of the Wizard's lies and empty promises, the way he pretended to be trustworthy so Elphaba would read spells for him. "But if that's love, it'd come at much too high a cost!"
"I'd sooner buy defying gravity." She glanced at Glinda, and was finally struck with what her friend was trying to do. Glinda wanted her to succeed, to be happy, and live a normal life. By following through on her plan, she was turning her back on everything and everyone she loved. Fiyero…The thought of him added a pain to the task she gave herself, but she couldn't turn back. She just wished she could have told him how she felt before she left, but had wrongly assumed she'd see him again. "Kiss me goodbye, I'm defying gravity, and you can't pull me down."
Great banging shook the door, the broom barely holding it shut.
"Open this door, in the name of his supreme Ozness!" A man shouted, beating the wooden door again. Glinda froze, not knowing how long the old door and broom would hold against trained guards. Elphaba opened the Grimmerie, searching through its pages for the wing spell. It was the only way to get out of here, and it was now or never.
"Ahven tatey aven tatey aven…" The familiar spell came more easily, Elphaba predicting the next syllable as she read it. Glinda's attention turned from the door to her friend and the magic she was casting.
"What are you doing?! Stop it!" Glinda cried out, fearing the outcome of more spells. "That's what started all this in the first place, that hideous levitation spell!"
"Ah may ah tay atum ah may ah tah tay…" Elphaba continued, lost in the arcane powers at work.
"STOP!" Glinda finally screamed. Elphaba looked up, the magic stopped. She was breathing hard, as if she had just run for miles.
"Well?" Glinda said quietly, relieved that Elphaba had stopped chanting. "Where are your wings?" Realization that she was wingless came to Elphaba. There was no way she could fly. She was trapped, they would capture her, and she had failed. "Maybe you're not as powerful as you think you are…" Glinda turned away. Silence grew with hopelessness and defeat, until Elphaba noticed something jiggling at the door handle. She looked up, and saw the broom she placed under the handle was vibrating, moving. It worked itself free, and started to float strangely with nothing holding it up.
"Sweet Oz!" Glinda exclaimed, backing away from the levitation cleaning tool.
"I told you, Glinda..." Elphaba stood and took the broom in her hands. It had the same buzz of power that the Grimmerie did. "Didn't I tell you?" Elphaba ran her fingers down the handle of the broom, knowing that this would fly. The simple branch and bunch of sticks would be their escape. The guards banged on the door again. Without the broom to block the door, they didn't have much time.
"Quick! Get on!" Elphaba held out the broom to Glinda. She backed away from it warily.
"What?!"
"Glinda, come with me," Elphaba said calmly. Her friend saw what really happened to the Monkeys, how the Wizard was a fraud, how he kept Animals in cages. She knew the truth. "Think of what we could do…together." Glinda stayed cautious, not yet trusting Elphaba's spell work. "Unlimited…together we're unlimited!" Glinda remembered when she was a young girl, she would run around in the backyard, pretending to fly high over Oz and see all the wonders her home had to offer. With Elphie, she could do that. They could both do that. "Together we'll be the greatest team there's ever been, Glinda…" Elphaba took another step, remembering the plans they had made, seemingly so long ago, on a bench outside the ice cream parlor. "Dreams, the way we planned 'em."
"If we work in tandem…" Glinda placed one hand on the broom. She felt her fingers tingle with its power.
"There's no fight we cannot win, just you and I defying gravity!" Glinda placed her second hand on the broom and gripped it tightly. It started to rise a bit, knowing that the pair wanted to fly, but they held it down together. "With you and I defying gravity!"
"They'll never bring us down!" Glinda let go of the broom, and Elphaba collected the Grimmerie. Glinda looked down sadly, having to make the hardest choice of her life. Go with Elphaba in a life of danger for goodness, or stay with the Wizard and be safe, yet fight for evil. She couldn't do it…She couldn't go.
"Well, are you coming?" Elphaba asked Glinda blatantly. She looked like the very picture the Wizard was trying to paint of her: Dark, foreboding, with a strange malevolent power. Did Glinda want to be like that?
"Elphie, you're trembling…" Glinda said with motherly worry, searching for something to give her friend, almost a parting gift. She saw the corner of black fabric from under a few boxes, and pulled it out. A perfect length, wide enough as well. Glinda draped the cloth around Elphaba's shoulders, tying a secure knot. She stepped back and surveyed the completed image. She did look wicked. The way the Wizard wants her to look.
"I hope you're happy," Glinda said sadly. "Now that you're…choosing this."
Elphaba understood immediately. No we're. She wouldn't come.
"You too," Elphaba thought of the life she was leaving behind, the life Glinda would live. "I hope it brings you bliss,"
"I really hope you get it, and you don't live to regret it!" The two wished, honestly hoping neither of them came to any real harm. "I hope you're happy in the end! I hope you're happy…" Memories of time spent together, pledges of best friends forever running through their heads. "…my friend."
The door shook again with heavy beating, sure to break. "Go, Elphie!" Glinda hissed, and Elphaba headed towards the window.
"There she is! Don't let her get away!" Glinda spread out her arms defensively, sure that Elphaba was about to fly off. The guards, five of them, rushed into the room and took Glinda roughly.
"What in Oz?!" She shouted, hoping that he noise would help Elphaba get away. "Let go of me! Do you hear me? Let go!"
"It's not her!" The guards dropped Glinda, pointing their spears and the one who had spoken. Elphie hadn't left yet?! Glinda thought as she turned to see her best friend. She was pointing the broom at them threateningly. "She has nothing to do with this." She circled slowly to the window. "I'm the one you want! It's me!" The guards rushed forward, but Elphaba tumbled out the window. "It's ME!" Sure she had fallen to her death, the guards were about to turn back to Glinda when a shadow blocked out the rest of the light. The green one was flying! Not falling to her death, flying! The guards stared on in wonder as she stayed suspended in the air, sitting astride the broom confidently.
"So if you care to find me, look to the western sky!" Elphaba pointed, electricity running through her body as she felt the exhilaration of flying, of defying everything that had ever kept her down. "As someone told me lately, everyone deserves the chance to fly! And if I'm flying solo, at least I'm flying free!" Glinda felt tears well up in her eyes as Elphaba spoke, knowing that she deserted her friend, truly left her alone to fend for herself against the forces of the Wizard.
"To those who ground me, take a message back from me!" Elphaba's broom moved away from the window, flying without any question of anything supporting her, over the square and shorter towers of the palace. "Tell them how I am defying gravity! I'm flying high, defying gravity! And someday I'll match them in renown…"
Her words were echoing around the Emerald City, people flooding the square to see this incredible woman flying, the very woman they needed to capture. Addressing the crowd, Elphaba continued.
"And nobody, in all of Oz," She pointed to the mass of people, staring up at her in terror. "No Wizard that there is or was, is ever gonna bring me DOWN!"
"I hope you're happy!" Glinda called out to Elphaba, as the citizens of the Emerald City shouted up, "Look at her, she's Wicked! Get her!" Elphaba looked down again at the mixture of fear and anger in the people's faces.
"Bring me down!" She called out again, trying to ignore the mean faces, demanding her imprisonment, maybe even death. She started to cry involuntarily, grieving the death of Elphaba Thropp, and the birth of a Wicked Witch.
"No one mourns the wicked! So we have- to- bring- her-"
"Ah-ah-ah-ah!" Elphaba cried out, hiding her tears with more altitude.
"DOWN!!!" The people shouted as Elphaba flew off into the distance.
There! I hope you're happy! I tried to do it as fast as I could...Intermission now, where hopefully I'll get a chapter or two ahead of demand so that next time I give you a cliffhanger, I can update right away. Review if you loved it, review it you hated it, review if you are eating pineapple upside-down cake, just review! That will make it better! Keep reading and writing! -LostOzian