She notices—really notices—for the first time when she comes up from Nanny's embrace, turning, heart screaming happiness, and he's not there to introduce. Her left eye twitches. Of course, it had to be him missing from the welcoming committee assembled now on the front steps. Quiet, unsure, undaring Liir. Missing. While Sarima's band of disobedient brats are right there. Such impeccable timing to discover a rebellious streak.
Elphaba shrugs off her irritation with a quiet huff (she won't let an insolent child dampen her mood, not when she's in such high spirits) and links arms with Nanny, off to make introductions.
(The have a glorious dinner, the sort of effort only made for a special guest. They even pass around some of that Vinkun brandy that burns deliciously in the back of the throat. And all the while the ice keeps melting, the water keeps rising, and far below, tired, cramping fingers clutch an old and tattered rope as water begins to seep into the bucket. The whispered cries for help get swallowed up by darkness and drowned in icy water. They go unheard. The lid is firmly closed.)
Liir is good at being invisible.
He's quiet and plain and unassuming and likes to keep to himself. He hides away sometimes in quiet corners, plain and undisturbed like him. He tends to disappear in crowds. They swallow him up whole, instead of making room for him to join.
Liir isn't good at being invisible. He simply is.
Elphaba looks at the empty seat at the breakfast table and frowns in annoyance and goes back to her soup. He will turn up eventually.
(The water rises still.)
The door to the sitting room explodes inward. At least three of the five sisters shriek, one even falls off the chaise lounge.
Nor and Irji shout something, one across the other, all gibberish. Only when Nor pauses to catch her breath do they understand.
"We found him!" cries Irji. "We found him, we found him!"
"Who?" asks Three, hoisting herself back on the settee.
"We found Liir! He's in the fishwell. We think he's dead!"
It takes the longest time for them to get down into the basement, to the room with the fishwell where every wall and ceiling is dripping with moisture. Elphaba curls into her cloak and watches as the sisters pull the boy out of the shaft. He's dripping wet and unmoving and looks like the bodies they dissected once, her and Doctor Dillamond, in the basement underneath his laboratory. Only that his skin looks more waxen, and his face is bloated and-
"What do we do, what do we do?" wails Four and grabs at Liir's soaked shirt to shake him.
His head rolls to the right, tilts back.
"You studied life sciences, didn't you, Auntie?" shouts Two in a panic. "Help him!"
Elphaba's fingers flex against the fabric of her cloak. "I- I never- I don't know anything, I never got a degree, and it's been years, anyways."
"Well, you're the only one he has right now!" Three snaps, whirling around to face her. "You have to do something."
Elphaba can't breathe. It's like her body has forgotten how.
"Nanny," she croaks. "Someone get Nanny."
So they do. Somehow, they get Liir up into the kitchen where Nanny directs them, one by one, to push or pull or squeeze or pump. A symphony of helpless women.
Elphaba stares at the Grimmerie someone pushed into her hands and watches the words rearrange themselves beat by beat. None make any sense to her. And those that do taste dangerous on the tip of her tongue before she even sounds them out.
"Don't just stand there, Elphaba, for Goodness' sake!"
Nanny rips the book out of her hands and flings it across the room.
Elphaba snarls.
But she heeds the woman's instructions all the same, bends over his limp body and presses her lips to his, pushing breath after breath into his mouth. (She wiped his wet face before but there was no time to be thorough and the water stings her lips and the hand with which she holds his head in place.)
When he jerks for the first time, she's almost annoyed, pushes him back down with the weight of her body and blows another breath between his blue lips. The second time, she opens her eyes and jumps back at the sight of his, the whites glowing a sickening yellow.
"My Oz!" cries Sarima and Liir's body convulses, his chest arching off the table, then snapping back into place.
They undress him and rub his body with lard until he and their hands reek of the stuff. Not even the thick blankets they wrap around him can cover up the smell.
"To bed with him," instructs Nanny, "quickly."
But it turns out that Liir doesn't actually have a bed to sleep in. There's no space in the children's rooms, and they couldn't burden Sarima or the sisters with him -they are guests after all. Nanny seems ready to explode out of sheer anger and disappointment, so-
"I suppose he might as well take mine," says Elphaba and collects the Grimmerie from the ground.
Darkness has claimed the lands and stillness rules the castle while everyone else is asleep, and Elphaba sits in the armchair by her bedside and can't stop replaying the events in her head.
The image of Liir's bloated body, all grey skin and blue lips, spasming on the kitchen table, is burnt into the forefront of her mind. The lifeless shell they pulled out of the shaft, smelling like death. The waxen hand that wrapped around her wrist when they carried him upstairs, every finger a wet and distorted claw. He left burn marks where he gripped her, like the water had seeped into his flesh.
And another image arises: of a body so different from Liir's. A beaten, bloodied body on wooden planks in a hide-out in the middle of the Emerald City. One she never got to see, not really, but that still haunts her to this day.
Elphaba feels she's right there again, dropping to her knees. Then, she clawed at her own skin, wailing like a wounded animal, willing herself out of this life. Then, it was an explosion of feelings in her chest, feelings so raw and hurting that the room around her exploded right along with them. A brief outburst of magic, the only one in many years. Now, the quiet panic seeps in hours after the fact.
A thousand ways she might've lost him tonight, a thousand ways it would've been her fault if she had.
The bed creaks. Elphaba bolts upright. Liir's body twitches, a sound escapes from his throat (low and haunting, almost like a whimper) and he turns, slowly, to face her. His pale face glows in the dark. His eyes remain shut.
Slowly, after long moments of bated breaths, Elphaba settles back into her chair. It's almost ridiculous, really, her sitting here now. As if she ever cared before. The boy didn't even have a proper place to sleep, for Oz' sake. Though, to be fair, it wasn't exactly her responsibility to provide him with a room. This isn't her house, after all. (The feeling keeps nagging her all the same.)
She must've fallen asleep at some point because when her eyes snap open, she, for a moment, doesn't know where she is. Her brain is still scrambling to adjust to reality when her eyes make out the trembling silhouette in the dark.
Blindly, she feels for the match box and makes to light a candle.
Liir hangs over the edge of the bed, one hand freed from the bundle of blankets to grip the bed frame, and strange noises rumble in his throat.
Almost on instinct, Elphaba empties the bucket she uses for her materials and shoves it right under his nose. He coughs and sputters and vomits with a terrible gargle that makes the hairs on Elphaba's neck stand.
Panting, gasping for air, he falls back into the pillows.
"Disgusting," murmurs Elphaba, puts the bucket to the side and tucks Liir's arm back under the blanket.
"The fish."
She nearly screams.
Liir's voice is quiet and raspy.
"The fish," he mumbles again. "She says… she…"
"Hush," says Elphaba over the sound of her pounding heart, in the same tone Nanny always used. "Go back to sleep."
(It's the first of many times this happens over the course of the night. By the time dawn points, Elphaba has long given up on the idea of rest.)
She's standing by the window, looking out over the courtyard and watching storm clouds form on the horizon. It must be midday by now, perhaps even afternoon, but she hasn't found it in her to leave the room.
Once, rather early in the morning, Sarima's children peeked into the room and asked after Liir. Elphaba took one look at Manek's twisted look of triumph-excitement-disgust and slammed the door in their faces.
When Sarima asked -for once stern with her children (and isn't it a bit late for that?)- the children said they didn't know where Liir was the whole time. But Elphaba knows, somehow just knows, that they had something to do with all of this. Manek at least, if not every one of them.
"We only want to see if he's okay," pleaded Nor through the closed door.
Elphaba snorted. The audacity!
She didn't answer, but her fingers curled around the armrests of her chair until her knuckles were almost white. Eventually, the children went away, and Elphaba barred the door.
The only one she's let into the room since is Nanny, which is a necessity because, while Elphaba might have experience with the sick and dying, Nanny knows her way around children. She bustled around Liir for a while, forced some soup into him (and threatened Elphaba with her cane if she didn't eat the lunch she brought up) and looked increasingly worried, the longer she stayed at his side. So Elphaba threw her out again. That look on her wrinkled face made her fingers itch.
Even just thinking about it now- Elphaba shudders. She moves away from the window and back to the bedside. Liir lies motionless beneath the sheets. His skin still has that sickening white hue to it, his lips are tinted blue.
She has only just sat down when, without warning, Liir's eyelids fold back. Out of habit, Elphaba reaches for the bucket, but the boy remains still. He looks directly at her. Seconds crawl by like hours, and he doesn't make a sound. Elphaba clears her throat. "Are you awake?"
His head rolls to the side. "Mmh."
Elphaba shifts to the edge of the chair. "Liir, why did you climb into the well?"
"Mmh."
She leans forward. "Did they make you—Manek and the others?"
"Mmmhhh."
"What?"
His lips move, but barely so. She leans even closer.
"I hid," says the raspy voice that doesn't sound like Liir at all. "The best…"
"You couldn't have got down by yourself," Elphaba urges. "Someone helped you. Who?"
Liir's eyelids flutter. He shivers. "The fish- the fish said I should come down. She said… I'm cold."
Elphaba stands up tucks his blanket up to his chin. She's shivering too, but not from the cold.
"The fish said Fiyero is my father."
She swallows. "Did- did she, now? I- did- did she say anything else, that fish?"
Liir keeps staring right at her. He swallows, then dissolves into a coughing fit. When he's recovered, he says: "She said Fiyero is my father and Manek and Irji and Nor are my brothers and sister. She didn't say anything about my mother."
His eyes wander around the room, but they keep landing on her. "You knew him. Fiyero—you, you knew him, right?"
Elphaba shivers. "I did."
The room seems unbelievably cold. Like the winter that's melting away outside has suddenly fled inside the castle.
"Why did the maunts send me with you?"
She can't look at him. "I don't know."
Liir opens his mouth, once, twice, like he's going to ask something but each time the words seem to fail him completely. But then he looks at her again, and takes a deep breath, and somewhere in that bloated body of his suddenly finds the courage.
"Could the reason they sent me along be that- that you're my—mother?"
Elphaba's mouth opens to say I don't know. But then she pauses. Because -and this is new- she's not sure that she's so unsure anymore.
"I—ask myself that sometimes," she eventually manages. "But I've never come to a conclusion."
"But you think you could be?"
Liir tries to be brave, but when Elphaba raises her head to look at him, he looks away.
"I don't think I could be a good mother. And that's really the point of it all, isn't it?"
For a moment, silence reigns over them with an icy hand.
Liir shifts on the bed. "Everyone needs parents."
"Oh," Elphaba snorts. "Sometimes parents do more harm than good."
Liir looks a bit angry underneath all that tiredness. "What happened to you that you're so bitter?"
"I grew up, Liir," she snaps. "It will happen to you too. Happens to everyone, some people just refuse to acknowledge it."
Liir's head has slowly tilted to the sides. His eyes slide shut, then pop open again, like he's trying really hard to stay awake. The last words before he falls asleep are: "I almost didn't."
And they send a chill down her spine that stays with her for hours.
"No one noticed I was gone," says Liir the next time he's awake.
It's long after supper time (for which Elphaba refused to come downstairs) and the sky is tinted grey and purple again. She was flicking through the Grimmerie, watching the letters twirl and dance and trying to catch the meaning of the words that sometimes appeared.
She looks up at him, now, and closes the book.
"Yes, we did. But we didn't think you were in danger."
"Or," says Liir, "you didn't care enough to come looking."
Elphaba, stung by his words, flashes him a glare.
"Or," she snaps back, "we didn't think anyone would be daft enough to climb into a fish well and almost drown."
Liir looks away. His eyes have welled with tears. Elphaba can't remember the last time he cried. A deep ache blooms at the centre of her chest.
"You're a loner, Liir," she pushes on through the pain, "We thought you were off playing somewhere on your own."
A tear rolls down one of Liir's still slightly bloated cheeks. He's not quick enough to wipe it away before Elphaba can see it.
"I'm not a loner," he whispers. "I'm just alone."
The ache has spread in her body. It consumes her.
Once, people also thought she was a loner. And, truthfully, she was, at least just a little bit. But most of the time, she was lonely, and tired of being different.
"Liir."
Elphaba leans closer, her book of spells abandoned in her lap, and reaches out to touch his shoulder. He winces.
"Why did you climb into the well?"
Liir turns to face her. "Why didn't you come looking for me?"
"Stop accusing me! I couldn't possibly have known that you were in danger!"
"You're MAGIC!" yells Liir. "You're the only one who-"
"I've got a book I can't read and a broom that doesn't listen to me most of the time. How's that magic?" She's risen out of her chair and paces back and forth. "And anyways, Nanny arrived, so my mind was on other matters. Now."
She stops in front of him, pointing her finger at his chest. "You tell me what possessed you to get into the fish well!"
Liir's shaking a bit. "You already know! Why do you need me to spell it out for you?"
Elphaba backs away just a step. She lets the air seep from her lungs in a slow, burning exhale. "It was Manek's idea, wasn't it?"
Liir doesn't answer, which is answer enough for Elphaba.
She wakes to the feeling of someone watching her. It's night or early morning and the room in complete darkness.
"Don't jump."
Elphaba jumps.
She scrambles for the match box and lights a candle.
Nor is sitting on the edge of the bed, feet dangling.
"What are you doing here?" hisses Elphaba.
"Watching over him," whispers Nor back.
"It's the middle of the night."
"I know." Nor grins excitedly. "I waited till you were asleep."
"Got back to bed."
"Already? But I've only been here an hour."
Elphaba's heart stops. An hour? Oz, how deeply did she sleep? Who else came here without her noticing? Her eyes scan the room. The Grimmerie is still there, so is her broom, and her writings. Liir is still asleep.
When her eyes meet Nor again, the girl has tilted her head to the side and watches her intently. "Why are you so paranoid?"
"I've learnt my lesson the hard way," says Elphaba and thinks of blue diamonds and whispered confessions and nights of ecstasy and how it all ended in blood. "Now go back to bed."
Nor blinks her huge eyes at her. "Is it alright if the straw cat stays?"
She points at a disfigured straw puppet vaguely resembling a cow tucked into the crook of Liir's elbow. "I made her for him. He stole mine once because he never had one for himself."
Elphaba sighs. "She can stay. Now go back to your room."
"Alright." Nor hops off the bed and sneaks away.
At the door, she pauses and looks back. "It's good he's got his own bed now. I can't stand sharing mine. Goodnight, Auntie."
Liir gets better. The fever breaks, his skin returns to its normal colour. It doesn't take very long for him to roam the castle again. Most of the time, he's by himself (he tries to avoid Manek as best as he can), but sometimes Nor joins him and they play together for a while.
Once, he goes down into the basement, to the room with the fishwell and, shivering, pushes the lid to the side to peek into the darkness below.
"Thank you," he whispers, "Thank you for telling me."
Manek dies one morning in early Spring.
The icicle is as long as Liir's forearm and sharp as a knife. It falls from the edge of a roof in the courtyard, slices through the air and right through Manek's shoulder. There's a lot of blood, and Manek falls to the ground with a grunt and dies, just like that.
The children scream and so do the sisters, and Sarima howls and cries and falls into the red snow. Nanny, white as a sheet, comes to her side and pats her shoulder and says: "There's nothing we can do now."
Liir's eyes find a window in the masonry. A shadow trembles and retreats.
Perhaps it's green.
Sometimes, Liir dreams he's back in the well with the water rising around him.
Sometimes, he wakes, panicked and yelling, and there's a figure standing over him, long black hair in a tousle, dark eyes wide awake. Sometimes she whispers "You're safe now, Liir. He can't hurt you anymore." And sometimes she doesn't say anything, just touches his trembling shoulder and sits down on the edge of the bed until he falls asleep again.
Never again do they talk about parents and fathers and mothers and the matter of Fiyero-Elphaba-Liir. Perhaps, if they had more time, they would've one day. But then the soldiers arrive, and Elphaba leaves and Sarima and the sisters and Nor and Irji disappear, and a storm rises, a house and a girl kill Elphaba's sister, and everything falls to pieces.
Elphaba dies.
But Liir is used to being alone.