“You’ll be pleased to hear there was no blood. I venture to guess there were massive internal injuries, but there was no blood. Of course Nessarose’s last few devo
ted followers thought this meant her spirit was taken up intact, and that she suffered little. I don’t imagine she suffered much, not with that kind of clonk on the noggin. Her more unhappy subjects, who were the greater in number, thought it a droll act of Lurlina, releasing them from Nessarose’s particular sort of fundamentalist bondage. There was revelry when I arrived, and much feting of the funny girl and the dog who seem to have lived in the house.”
“Oh, who’s that?” said the Witch, who hadn’t heard this part.
“Well, you know how Munchkinlanders bow and scrape no matter what their democratic inclinations. No sooner had I arrived than they deferred to me, introducing me as a witch. I tried to correct them, a sorceress is really much more apt, but never mind. It was no doubt the outfit, it cowed them. I was in a salmon-pink fantasy that day, and really it suited me.”
“Go on,” said the Witch, who had never liked talking about clothes.
“Well, the child introduced herself: Dorothy from Kansas. I didn’t know the place, and said as much. She appeared as much surprised as anyone else about what had happened, and she had a nasty little pooch yapping about her heels. Tata or Toto or something. Toto. So this Dorothy was in some state of shock, I can tell you. A fairly homely little girl with little fashion sense, but I suppose that comes later in life for some than others.” She glanced sideways at the Witch. “Much later, in some cases.” And they both chuckled at that.
“Dorothy supposed she should try to get back to her home, but as she couldn’t remember having studied anything about Oz in school, nor could I recall a place named Kansas, we decided that she should look for help elsewhere. The fickle Munchkinlanders seemed ready to nominate her as Nessie’s successor, which would have angered Nipp and all those ministers in Colwen Grounds who’ve spent their careers jockeying for position when and if Nessarose ever saw fit to die. Besides, there may be other developments afoot. Dorothy might have gotten in the way.”
“An eye to public affairs, well, somehow I’m not surprised,” said the Witch, in fact quite pleased. “I always knew you were in there somewhere, Glinda.”
“Well, I thought the better move would be to get Dorothy out of Munchkinland before a civil war tore this place up even worse than it already is. There are factions, you know, who support the re-annexation of Munchkinland by Oz. It would do the girl no good to get caught in the crossfire of opposing interests.”
“Oh, so she’s not here,” said the Witch. “I had thought I’d meet her.”
“Dorothy? Now you’re not going to take against her, are you?” said Glinda. “She’s a child, really. Big by Munchkinlander standards, of course, but a squat little thing nonetheless. She’s an innocent, Elphie; I can see by the gleam in your eye that you’re up to your old paranoia thing again. She wasn’t piloting that house, you know, she was trapped in it. This would be one struggle you’d do well just to leave alone.”
The Witch sighed. “You may be right. You know, I’m getting used to stiff muscles in the morning. Sometimes I think that vengeance is habit forming too. A stiffness of the attitude. I keep hoping that the Wizard will be toppled in my lifetime, and this aim seems to be at odds with happiness. I suppose I can’t take on avenging the death of a sister I didn’t get on all that well with anyway.”
“Especially if the death is an accident,” Glinda said.
“Glinda,” said the Witch, “I know you must remember Fiyero, and you have heard of his death. Fifteen years ago.”
“Of course,” said she. “Well, I heard he died, under mysterious circumstances.”
“I knew his wife,” said the Witch, “and his in-laws. It was suggested to me once that he had been carrying on an affair with you in the Emerald City.”
Glinda turned yellow-pink. “My dear,” she said, “I was fond of Fiyero and he was a good man and a fine statesman. But among other things, you will remember he was dark-skinned. Even if I took up dalliances—an inclination I believe rarely benefits anyone—you are once again being suspicious and cranky to suspect me and Fiyero! The idea!”
And the Witch realized, sinkingly, that this was of course true; the ugly skill at snobbery had returned to Glinda in her middle years.
But for her part, Glinda had no real inkling that the Witch was implicating herself as Fiyero’s adulterous lover. Glinda was too fussed to listen that closely. The Witch in fact alarmed her a little. It was not just the novelty of seeing her again, but the strange charisma Elphaba possessed, which had always put Glinda in the shade. Also there was the thrill, basis indeterminable, which made Glinda shy, and caused her to rush her words, and to speak in a false high voice like an adolescent. How quickly you could be thrown back to the terrible uncertainty of your youth!
For when she chose to remember her youth at all, she could scarcely dredge up an ounce of recollection about that daring meeting with the Wizard. She could recall far more clearly how she and Elphie had shared a bed on the road to the Emerald City. How brave that had made her feel, and how vulnerable too.
They walked for a way in a restless silence.
“Things might begin to improve now,” said the Witch after a time. “I mean Munchkinland will be a mess for a while. A tyrant is terrible, but at least he or she imposes order. The anarchy that follows the deposition of a tyrant can be bloodier than before. Still, things may work out all right. Father always said that when left to themselves, the Munchkinlanders had a great deal of common sense. And Nessie was, for all practical purposes, a foreigner. She was raised in Quadling Country, and you know, she may have been half Quadling herself, I’ve come to realize. She was a foreign queen on this soil, despite her inherited title. With her gone, the Munchkinlanders might just right themselves.”
“Bless her soul,” said Glinda. “Or do you still not believe in the soul?”
“I can make no comment on the souls of others,” said the Witch.
They walked some more. Here and there the Witch saw, as before, the totemic straw men, pinned to tunics, and erected like effigies in the corners of fields. “I find them somewhat creepy,” she said to Glinda. “Now one other thing I want to ask you; I asked this of Nessa once. Do you remember Madame Morrible’s corralling us into her parlor, and proposing we become three Adepts, three high witches of Oz? Sort of secret local priestesses, shaping public policy behind the scenes, contributing to the stability—or instability—of Oz as required by some unnamed higher authority?”
“Oh, that farce, that melodrama, how could I forget it?” said Glinda.
“I wonder if we were put under a spell then? Do you remember, she said we couldn’t talk about it, and it didn’t seem that we could?”
“Well we are talking about it, so if there was any truth to it, which I doubt, it’s certainly worn off by now.”
“But look what’s happened to us. Nessarose was the Wicked Witch of the East—you know that’s what they called her, don’t pretend to be so shocked—and I have a stronghold in the West, and I seem to have rallied the Arjikis around me, by dint of the absence of their ruling family—and there you are, sitting pretty in the North with your bank accounts and your legendary skills at sorcery.”
“Legendary nothing; I simply see to it that I am admired in the right circles,” said Glinda. “Now, my memory is just as good as yours. And Madame Morrible proposed that I be an Adept of Gillikin, but that you be an Adept of Munchkinland, and Nessa be an Adept of Quadling Country. The Vinkus she didn’t think worth bothering about. If she was seeing the future, she got it wrong. She got you and Nessa all wrong.”
