The Wicked Witch of the East: Evanora's Return
[Part 2]
CHAPTER 7: HEATHER
-Emerald City-
*~ Oscar ~*
Glinda calls a meeting nearly the moment she and Locasta return, not giving Oz the chance to leave his office or have Firefly escorted back to her shared room. It was just like the fairy tales where witches invade the king's throne room and take control of the situation, leaving him looking like a puppet. Fortunately for Oz, the witches taking over are good and more or less in charge already – if not, he would be in serious trouble.
Glinda sits down heavily with a tired exhale. "They're preparing for battle."
Perhaps he is in trouble regardless.
"Hello, dear." Locasta cards her fingers through Firefly's hair then pauses and crouches down. "Who is this?"
Firefly glances at him briefly, but holds out her new friend to the Good Witch of the North, "Mister Bear."
"How do you do, Mister Bear?" Locasta holds out her hand for a shake and Firefly giggles, wiggling a bear-paw into the woman's open palm.
It's so sweet it almost eclipses thought of the wicked witches.
"Are the wicked witches coming to Emerald City, Miss Casta?" Firefly sounds so sad.
"No, darling." The dark haired witch shoots a glare Glinda's way, but the Witch of the South has her eyes closed and completely misses it. "Little Miss Princess is being selfish with the details."
"Little Miss Princess also saw the covenant's ritual the same as Big Miss Casta." Glinda retorts evenly.
Oz has many questions, but few that can be asked in the presence of Firefly. Instead he turns his attention to the matter he has some influence over. "Firefly found Mr Bear while exploring and would like our help finding out if he has a friend who is missing him."
In hindsight, steering the conversation this way is what leads to him getting scolded.
"Yup! The Wizard said I can go exploring as long as I stay on the third floor. So I looked around and found this big room with lots of dust and old furniture! Mister Bear was on the bed under the covers, but he was all alone…"
"You mean to say she wasn't with you?" A witch of water she may be, but Locasta's gaze is downright icy.
"In my defence, I asked the guards and servants to keep an eye on her and to bring her to me if she got lost."
"There weren't any guards or servants there though." Firefly's honest confusion would be adorable in any other situation, but right now it's just damning. "After I found Mr Bear I went back to where the guards were and asked one of them to bring me to Mister Wizard. I promise I didn't do anything bad!"
"That's not what we meant, sweetie." Now Glinda is glaring at him too. "Someone should have been with you."
Locasta isn't finished with him either. "Why weren't there any guards? If she kept to the third floor, there should have been a patrol for every hall."
She's right of course, but he hasn't gotten around to making a new rotation schedule. With the way Theodora had left things and now with how matters have been with the witches, there was too much to be done and no time to make an entire new plan, so they just used Evanora's guard schedule as a base.
"I don't know. The guard that brought her here said she was wandering the former royal wing."
"How did you manage to get there?" Glinda seems surprised and Oz is momentarily confused. He recalls belatedly that she once mentioned her intent to close off the old wing until they have the time to manage it. Did Firefly somehow slip past the guards stationed or had Glinda used magic to keep out visitors?
"I walked?"
"Firefly dear, can you tell me where exactly you found Mr Bear?"
"Uh…"
Locasta smooths the girl's hair, smiling gently. "Why don't you show us instead?"
"Okay!"
Her enthusiasm seems boundless. Unfortunately, so does Locasta's cold shoulder.
-Emerald City-
*~ Glinda ~*
Firefly leads them to the abandoned corridor, following a set of stairs that Glinda is certain had not been there six years ago. She assumes Evanora must have broken out a passageway because the steps are of the same stone and design as the rest of the initial construct, implying that it isn't newly added.
She guides them down a hallway that Glinda knows hasn't been touched since her father's passing, and then opens gilded doors into rooms worn away by time and a mysterious fire – rooms Glinda recognizes as a symbol of the time right before her world was turned on its head.
"What happened here?" The Wizard asks in quiet shock, Locasta following behind him with an equally confused expression directed towards her.
She wraps her arms around herself, suddenly feeling cold. "Six years ago, shortly before my father died, a fire broke out. No one knows how it started, only that it ravaged everything here." She looks at Firefly and lowers her voice to prevent being overheard, "Including the servant inside."
Locasta's eyes close, perhaps in prayer, and Oscar stares in wide-eyed horror. "How awful."
She motions them on when she notices Firefly waiting, following the girl into the bed chamber and towards the middle of the room.
"I found Mr Bear by the bed." She explains quietly, pointing, but does not move closer.
Oscar notices as well. "Something wrong?"
Firefly looks between them then towards the bed. "When I was here before, there was an apple on the ground. It made me feel icky."
Locasta charges on before Glinda can ask for more information, sweeping towards the bed then crouching briefly before coming to a rise with a green apple in hand. When she approaches, it becomes obvious that there are two bites missing, but it isn't brown and the flesh isn't bruised or aging.
When Glinda meets Locasta's eyes, there is a coldness there she isn't used to seeing. "What is it?"
"This is a Fairy Artefact. The Apple of Vitiation."
She's too stunned to speak, but Oscar manages to do so for both of them. "That… That thing is responsible for what happened to Theodora?"
Locasta looks right at her, firm. "I may not have been around when these rooms were inhabited, but looking around it's obvious who lived here. Her magic is in the air, on that bear, and just like Theodora's, on this accursed apple." Glinda doesn't respond and Locasta takes it as initiative to step even closer. "Will you continue to deny what is right before your eyes?"
"What are you saying?"
"Miss Casta?"
Locasta's stare doesn't waver and in the end, Glinda finds her voice, strained and pulling at her heart. "This is Evanora's old room. Evanora's, and Andahan's."
Of course, Locasta doesn't leave it at that. "And we may have just discovered the reason she agreed to a contract with Zurline. Which Glinda is going to confirm with the Book of Records."
-Book of Records-
It's late evening in the memory and she's in the same room she recently vacated. The one where Firefly found Mr Bear and where Locasta forced her to consider the depth of what she's done.
Perhaps she asked this question to avoid asking the one she fears an answer to.
Nevertheless, the memory plays out with Evanora standing before the window, her green silk nightgown bathed in moonlight. Her hair is down, curling around her shoulders. Her necklace, the one that broke apart in Glinda's hand almost a year ago now, seems to glow in the light.
"My lady."
Glinda spins around at the sound of the familiar voice. Indeed, right before her eyes with her head bowed and towels stacked in her arms, is Madam Heather. Uniform spotless, grey hair pulled back in a neat bun and her wrinkled face kind and concerned.
It's enough to bring tears to her eyes.
Madam Heather had been her nurse and then Andahan's. When Evanora came to Emerald City, she helped her with Theodora and later, when Evanora and Andahan were married, Madam Heather requested to continue serving under Evanora as a personal attendant.
Only to die in the fire.
"It's almost time."
Evanora's arms seem to wrap tighter around her middle, her voice a whisper in the night. "I'm frightened."
Setting down the towels, Madam Heather approaches and gently turns her around. She coaxes Evanora to take her hands and though Glinda cannot see Madam Heather's face, she imagines the woman smiling. "You have been so strong. So very strong. It's alright to be afraid. And I am so grateful that you felt safe enough to tell me."
"I don't think I can do this." Evanora's voice cracks. Glinda takes a step closer, squinting into the shadows cast over her face, prominent now that her back is to the window, and manages to make out the slightest of shimmers. She's crying.
Such a foreign concept and yet Glinda's heart aches for her.
"It will be hard. It may even be too much, but I can promise you this: you will not be alone."
Madam Heather takes Evanora into her arms, embracing her as the Emerald Witch cries into her shoulder. So openly vulnerable in a way Glinda has never seen.
For the first time since she herself had cried into her father's chest about the fire, Glinda realises that Evanora had lost Madam Heather as well. Andahan had already passed and Theodora dependant on her, struggling with her power, neither a child nor a woman.
While Glinda wept into her father's waiting arms, who was with Evanora?
-Book of Records-
By the end of the memory, Glinda was shaken and her heart sat as a stone in her stomach. She left the Hall of Records in silence, locking it behind her. Locasta and Oscar are waiting on her, but how can she face them, confirm Locasta's suspicions, when memory of Evanora's fall replayed in her mind with a weight she only now understood.
There was no way around it now, she will have to confess. Confess and pray that she may one day be forgiven for all she has done and all that she had not known.
-Emerald City-
*~ Locasta ~*
When Glinda returns at last, she comes back seemingly defeated. Her shoulders slumped, her posture stooped and her eyes distant. Locasta wonders if she has at last accepted that Evanora was more than the woman who killed her father, that who she was before and who she became are two sides of one and the same being.
"Well?"
"You were right." Her voice is quiet and thick, like she's fighting off tears.
The Wizard, to his credit, sees it too. "Glinda?"
"There's something I have to tell you both." She seems like the little girl Locasta had met so long ago, the one who cried when her stepmother would not come home and the same girl who begged her and Evanora to teach her more about magic so that she too may do the wonderful things that they can. "When we retook Emerald City… When I faced off against Evanora. Her necklace. I… She fell, and it turned to dust." Her voice breaks. "She must have managed to get away, but even so, she could not have survived."
"Why didn't you say anything?" He asks her, taking her into his arms to comfort, but Glinda just shakes her head, her confession and the emotions accompanying it overwhelming her.
Locasta allowed them a moment and then when Glinda seems calmer, she finally speaks. "She's alive."
"What?"
"How do you know?"
"I've seen her. The thief I'm looking for, the one who stole the silver slippers? It was Evanora. "
Apologies for the delay, today was busier than I expected. I do hope this chapter was worth the wait, though! Please share your thoughts.
Until the next chapter!
– L.L.