(AN: Okay, new chapter!)

(No apologies, no excuses, just a new chapter.)

Bad Memories

"You can't do this to me!" the little girl squealed.

"Elphie, you can't do this to her!" Glinda echoed.

Elphaba locked Dorothy in the West Tower. Where they would be going, they could not afford to have a child tagging along with them, and a stranger from another world (and slightly insane, as Elphaba thought her to be) at that. Furthermore, she could not risk having Dorothy have the run of the castle.

"You'll be much safer in here," Elphaba said as she closed the door behind.

"But I wanna go with..."

The door was shut, and Elphaba turned the key in the lock. Click! Now Dorothy was locked away in the West Tower.

"Elphie!" Glinda, now clad in her pale blue bubble dress - one of the dresses Chistery had brought her from the Emerald City - retorted. "What if she needs to eat?"

"I'll have the Monkeys drop something in through the window." Elphaba said as she walked down the winding stair-well from the Tower. She was clad in her frayed and torn black dress.

"What if she has to...you know?"

"Spit it out, Glinda! We're all adults here!"

"Well, technically, I'm only twenty-two."

"That's adult-age, Glinda!"

"You know, if she has to pee or something..."

"I think there's a chamber pot in the West Tower," Elphaba replied.

"You think?"

"Glinda, we're not bringing her with us. She'll only drag us down."

"That's just wrong, leaving her locked up in the tower like that! What if something happens to her?"

"I'll have the Monkeys check up on her, to make sure she's not dead."

"Oh, well, you just think of everything, didn't you, Elphie?"

"Actually I did," the green woman replied. "So there'll be no quick escapes from the tower for wee little Dorothy. Now come on, let's go."

With Glinda bouncing after her, Elphaba ran to the East Tower, scaled the stairs in record time, then picked up her broom from off the wall and walked out to the open parapet.

"Grab on!" Elphaba quickly ordered as she swung her right leg over the broomstick. Glinda grabbed hold of Elphaba's shoulders, and with a sudden jolt, that felt quite literally like someone had tied a rope to her stomach and pulled very hard, they took off into the sky.

Glinda didn't know how long they had been flying across Oz. Long enough, apparently, for the two of them to pass the Vinkus River down below. Now they were doing laps above Restwater Lake, staying just out of sight of the Emerald City.

"Elphie!" Glinda called back from behind, where her tiny fingers were gripping iron-like into Elphaba's bony shoulders. "Are we going anywhere any time soon? I think I'm going to be sick!"

But Elphaba kept looking around, as if searching for something that had suddenly disappeared from her sight, or from her memory.

"How about Munchkinland? I want my bubble machine!"

"Your what machine?" Elphaba finally called back, Glinda's silly statement instantly catching her attention.

"My bubble machine! It crashed somewhere in Munchkinland. If I had it, we could find whatever it is you're searching for faster..."

"Wait, there it is!" she exclaimed.

Elphaba turned the broom eastward, but stopped several miles shy of the foothills of the Madelines. There, as if waiting for her, was the entrance to a cave sitting a little away from the rest of the mountain. It looked more like a miner's tunnel, but mines were rarely seen this far from the Glikkus Scalps.

"Where are we?" Glinda asked as they landed outside the mine-shaft entrance.

"I don't know," Elphaba replied. Her determined look at the gaping maw of the tunnel, however, seemed to belie what she was uttering from her lips.

"Well," Glinda stated, bouncing along behind her. "You sure act like you know where you're going."

"It's hard to explain," Elphaba paused at last, coming to a halt just at the mouth of the cave. "I know this before, because a friend from Ev helped me make this tunnel. It comes out just above the bank of the Lake."

"Who do you know from Ev?"

"Oh, he's just a traveler, mercenary-type," she replied. "Stiff-jointed, has a mean right punch. Major idealist, always talking about honor and duty to one's country." She scoffed. "Sounds like a Wizomaniac to me."

"Sounds like a certain green witch to me." Glinda added.

"My sense of patriotism is my skin," Elphaba replied drolly. "And my only duty is to the Animals of Oz." Elphaba snapped her fingers and a globe of fire the size of an orange floated just above the palm of her right hand. Using this as a light, she walked on into the tunnel, with Glinda following after her.

"You're getting good at that fire-spell," Glinda commented.

"Fire seems to come naturally," Elphaba replied. "Some would say it's because I have a fiery personality, or temper, as my father would put it."

"How is your father, by the way?" Glinda asked. "I don't recall you ever mentioning him much, except..."

"He's dead," Elphaba stated. "Died three years ago." Though how she knew this, she could not rightly explain.

"I'm sorry."

"It's better that way. He never loved me, and now..." Elphaba paused.

"Now what?"

"Now we keep going," Elphaba resumed. A few moments of awkward silence as Glinda noted that Elphaba's answer was not in line with what she had been saying beforehand.

"So you met this mercenary guy from Ev, and..."

"He helped me with the Animals, seemed to think it was a worthy cause."

"That was very nice of him."

Elphaba chuckled. "He didn't do it for free, you know. He asked me to help him with his vendetta against some Evian princess who's a little too heady for her own good."

"Well, are you gonna?"

Elphaba laughed. "I have my hands full here in Oz! Do you know how much I'd have to accomplish before even considering that? The Wizard would have to be out of power, Madam Morrible put behind bars and Oz well on its way to restoring Animal Rights. That's hardly something I can accomplish overnight, you know."

"But, supposing you could do it all soon, would you still help this Evian friend of yours?"

"No. Let him fight his own battles for a change."

"Elphaba!"

"His petty personal vendetta is none of my business."

"That's mean!"

Just then, the sound of bleating could be heard from deeper within the tunnel.

"Did you hear that, Elphie?" Glinda asked.

"Yes," Elphaba nodded. "It's a Sheep."

"A sheep?"

"Sheep, Glinda. About a week ago, I remember helping a Sheep janitor out of Shiz when she lost her job. I brought her and her children out here, but didn't have time to find her husband."

Minutes later, a very crazed looking Sheep with scraggly brown wool, covered with burs and bits of dried hay, crawled out into the light of Elphaba's fiery orb.

"Who's there?" he asked. The voice was distinctly male. "I know you're there, even if...even if I can't see you." His voice broke off into a long train of incoherent baaing and bleating.

"He doesn't have much time!" Elphaba cried. "He's losing his voice!" With one hand still on the fire-orb, she knelt down at the Sheep's side and placed her arm around his neck. "Mr. Frym, can you hear me? Listen, whatever you do, keep speaking!"

"I...I...I think I can see something," the Sheep said again, his voice calming down. "Yes, there's a f-f...and f-f-f-f..."

"Fire?" Elphaba helped.

"Yes, that's it! A fire! There's so much light! And, I see your face." Suddenly the Sheep's whole voice and demeanor changed.

"Where is my wife? Where are my children? What have you done with them, you monster!"

"Elphie!" Glinda cried out, throwing her hands over her ears.

"They trusted you!" Mr. Frym the Sheep continued. "You betrayed them! They're true! They're wicked, cruel people in the City, but they were right about you!"

"What's he saying?"

"Give them back to me, if you can, you witch! Give them baaaa..." The Sheep broke off into incoherence once again.

Elphaba did not move, she did not even try to resuscitate the Sheep as he began losing his speech. Something else seemed to be clouding her memory, robbing her of the strength to do...anything...

Don't touch it! It's dangerous!

Has there been any word from my husband?

Where's daddy?

I know what you are. Don't you see? It's over. You've lost!

Elphaba Thropp is dead.

First the voices, a cacophony of sound so loud, so tumultuous and so dissonant it made Elphaba want to scream, cry, tear her hair out, cover her ears. Then came the images. A dark room in the Thropp Family mansion in Colwen Grounds, this very cave, the fields outside Center Munch, a figure clad in black dragging something heavy toward a large pit, where a dozen whitened forms were moldering, flies bloating upon them.

With a shiver, Elphaba knew exactly what those forms were, and who that figure was, even as the distorted green face appeared.

(AN: As with A Stumble in the Dark, I've learned that to build up suspense, don't let the cat out of the bag until the time is right.)

(However, I do like that little reference to Langwidere as being that 'Evian princess who's too heady for her own good'. And as for the "mercenary", read Ozian Adventures: The Land or The Great War of Oz: Revisited for more about him. My stories operate in separate universes that are unique and separate from each other, but I will make cross-references to them, mostly just for fun.)