The scarecrow, whose birth name was Fiyero and who had spent his first twenty-something years as a human from the Vinkus, brushed the excess straw off his raggedy clothes and began to stumble through the ocean of corn. Occasionally a crow got too close for comfort, but all Fiyero had to do now was wave his arms and it would flap off to wherever crows go when they don't feel like being annoying.
Fiyero came from the Vinkus in Oz, which was mostly rocky (the only plants were prickly shrubberies that tended to trip people as they hurried to do something important), but he went to school in Shiz and afterwards he had spent a lot more time than he liked in Munchkinland, where the opposition was based. Munchkinland was the center of agriculture in Oz, and by the time Fiyero had fallen in love, out of love, in love again, and lastly into a scarecrow, he had a vague idea of which cornfield belonged to which Munchkin.
This, of course, was totally different.
None of the fields in Munchkinland, he observed, were this big. The largest had belonged to the local government (which was entirely Elphaba's sister, and, for an extremely short while, Elphaba herself), and it was only half an acre.
Unless the way people did things here were radically different from in Oz, he figured that he had not left the same cornfield in which he had landed. If he was correct, then this field must be acres and acres long. All of them must be acres and acres.
But, he noticed, the stalks of corn seemed almost ready to harvest, and they were only half as high as the stalks in Munchkinland. To generate the same amount of corn, they must have to spread it out over a great deal of land.
Now, Fiyero had "gone to school" in Shiz, but to him it had basically been a series of social hours. He had whiled away his months at the back of a classroom, feet up on the desk despite the pleas and warnings of the faceless professor, trying to catch the eye of either the prettiest girl in the class or the ugliest, depending on whether he wanted amusement or pleasure.
History had been the worst (or best, depending on how you looked at it). Instead of simply glancing at the day's chosen girl, he had shot spitballs and rubber bands at her, sneaking kisses while the nervous bleating goat's back was turned. He barely knew the meaning of the word history, even now.
But he did remember the day that horrible goat sent him to the front of the class like a naughty schoolboy (instead of the naughty college student title he thought he deserved), ordered to sit in a desk attached to a chair, so it was impossible to make visible his feet, and commanded to listen.
The goat-doctor had been talking about magic and agriculture, and how much each depended on the other.
"Corn is especia-a-ally important," he bleated. "When the art of ma-a-a-agic descended from the fairies to the lower life forms, the first use to which it was put wa-a-as the growth of corn. A-a-a-almost overnight, stalk heights doubled, and mass hunger – a-a-a-at least in Munchkinla-a-a-and – disappeared."
The corn here was not tall. And, if the people here were anything like the people in Oz, they would do anything to make things grow higher, wider, faster. Which meant: there was no sorcery here.
Did Elphaba know? They had been banking on it.
He had to find her.
"Elphaba!" he called.
He had been walking along a very faint, narrow trail through the endless corn, but it was getting him nowhere. For hours now, he had seen nothing but corn, sky, and the occasional wispy cloud that had nothing to do with anything and so disappeared as quickly as it came.
He pushed his way through the stalks of maize, and immediately his speed halved. He felt no pain, as Elphaba intended, but the discomfort was prominent as the stalks scratched open his shirt, his pants, his corn-husk skin. Occasionally he called out for Elphaba, for somebody, anybody. He was a man, he kept reminding himself, and men aren't inclined to express cowardice, even to only a few crows. But the monotony was driving him crazy.
He began talking to himself. "How can I hear?" he asked nobody and everybody. "My ears are made of I don't know what. I never paid attention in science – or history – or math – or anything, really – but I know there's something inside my ear that makes it hear-" he laughed manically at his unintentional rhyme, "-and if all that is made of plant material, if it's there at all, how can I hear myself talking? How can I hear the crows squawking? How can I . . ."
He took a deep breath, ready to burst into song, but a second later decided against it. It just didn't seem right here, didn't seem like something the people would do.
Not that he had seen any person other than Elphaba, who was too amazing to be a person . . .
At one point he sat, gave up. She can find me here, he reasoned. Just because sorcery isn't widespread doesn't mean she can't perform it herself. She can cast some hocus-pocus spell out of that book of hers and find me in a snap. All I have to do is sleep and wait.
Ten seconds later he was up again, running, knocking down cornstalks, frantically thinking, I have to find her! Where is she? Is she hurt? I HAVE TO FIND HER!
He shook his head as hard as he could; hoping that his many excess thoughts would fly out and go spinning away like the clouds. When the world (or at least, this one) came back into focus, he saw something other than corn. He blinked a few times, praying that it was what he thought it was, and not something wonderfully horrible indigenous to this universe.
It was only a tree.
It was a beautiful, lonely tree, the kind that Elphaba would like to sit under and think. Trees like that weren't found much in Oz – most trees were surrounded by other trees, in government-designated forests, only destroyable if the Wizard said okay.
He made his way towards it, and it became clearer. Its bark was smooth, not crusty, and the leaves looked as though they had been glued on as an afterthought. The trunk was one for about five feet, and then it branched off in two parts with a feeble attempt at a third, perfect for sitting, if you could climb it.
When he first saw it, he had thought it stood among the corn, but as he got closer he realized that the field ended, and the tree marked that ending. The tree wasn't alone, either.
He recognized Elphaba instantly, though her back was turned and no skin was visible. She was talking to somebody, gesturing wildly. Fiyero guessed that either the people here were extraordinarily small, or she was talking to a child. As he approached, every breath a sigh of relief, he heard part of the conversation. A piping little girl's voice, not dissimilar from the one whose owner had supposedly "killed" the "witch", asked, "Then . . . why is your skin green?" She hiccupped slightly, which Fiyero took to mean she had just finished crying.
Elphaba chuckled, made a small gesture to Fiyero from behind her back, and replied, "Same reason the scarecrow behind me is walking and will soon ask me what the heck I think I'm doing."