“We both were, we shared him,” said Frex. “Your mother and I did. It was a lifetime ago and I don’t know why anymore; I don’t think I knew why then. I haven’t loved anyone else since your mother died, except of course my children.”
“What a brutal history of sacrifices,” she said. “I was just talking to a Cow who expects to be a blood victim. Is that possible?”
“The more civilized we become, the more horrendous our entertainments,” said Frex.
“And it’ll never change, or will it? I remember the etymology of the word Oz, at least as proposed at a lecture by our Head, Madame Morrible. She said that academics were inclined to locate the root of the term in the Gillikinese cognate oos, which carries freights of meaning about growth, development, power, generation. Even ooze, with its distant companion noun virus, is thought to belong to the same general family. The older I get, the more accurate this derivation seems to be.”
“And yet the poet of the Oziad calls it ‘Land of green abandon, land in endless leaf.’”
“Poets are just as responsible for empire building as any other professional hacks.”
“Sometimes I would give anything to get away from here, but I dread the thought of a trip across the deadly sands.”
“That’s only a legend,” said Elphie. “Papa, you taught me that the sands are no more deadly than these fields. That reminds me of the other theory, that Oz is related to the word oasis. What the nomadic peoples of the north thought of Gillikin, time beyond thinking, when Oz was first discovered and settled. Now look, Papa, you needn’t go so far. The Vinkus is nearly another country. Why don’t you come back with me?”
“I would love to, honey,” he said. “But how could I leave Nessarose? I never could.”
“Even if she’s Turtle Heart’s daughter and not yours?” she said, stingingly because stung.
“Especially if that,” he answered.
And Elphaba saw that by not knowing for sure if Nesssarose had been fathered by himself or by Turtle Heart, Frex had decided in some subrational way that she was the daughter of them both. Nessarose was the proof of their brief union—theirs, and, obviously, Melena’s as well. It didn’t matter how crippled Nessarose was; she would always be more than Elphaba, always. She would always mean more.
Elphaba and Nessarose sat in Nessa’s bedchamber. A handmaid served some soup made of cow’s stomach. Elphie, not normally squeamish, couldn’t eat it. The maid neatly spooned tiny portions into Nessie’s mouth.
“I’m not going to beat around the bush,” Nessarose said. “I would like you to join me here as a sister-at-arms, to lead my circle of advisors and to manage in my absence if I should travel.”
“I have no love of Munchkinland, from what I’ve seen so far,” said Elphaba. “The people are cruel and impressed by charades, the pomp of this place is oppressive, and I do believe you’re sitting on a powder keg.”
“All the more reason you should stay and help me,” said Nessarose. “Weren’t we raised up to expect a life of service?”
“Your shoes have made you strong,” said Elphie. “I didn’t know shoes could do that. I don’t think you need me. Don’t lose those shoes, though.” She thought: Your shoes give you an unnatural balance. You look like a serpent standing on its tail.
“Surely you remember them from before?”
“Yes, but I hear Glinda amplified them with a magic spell, or something.”
“Oh, that Glinda! What a card.” Nessie swallowed and smiled. “Well, you can have the shoes, my dear—over my dead body. I’ll rewrite my will and leave them to you. Though what they would do for you, I can hardly imagine. They didn’t grow me new arms. Perhaps enchanted shoes won’t change the color of your skin but will make you enticing enough so that it won’t matter.”
“I’m already too old to be that enticing.”
“Why you’re still in the prime of life, and so am I!” said Nessarose, laughing. “Tell me you’ve got some romancing man in a Vinkus yurt or tent or teepee or whatever it is they call home there. Come on.”
“I have been wondering something, ever since I saw you do that spell this morning,” Elphie said. “The spell over the axe.”
“Oh right. Small potatoes, that one.”
“Do you by any chance remember that time in Shiz, when Madame Morrible said she was putting us under a spell? And that we couldn’t talk to each other about it?”
“Go on. Sounds familiar. She was so creepy, wasn’t she? A master of tyranny.”
“She said she had chosen us—me, you, and Glinda—to be Adepts. To be agents of someone quite high up. To be sorceresses and, I don’t know, secret accomplices. She promised we’d be highly placed and effectual. She made us think we couldn’t ever discuss it with one another.”
“Oh yes, that. I do remember. What a witch she was.”
“Well, do you think there’s any truth to that? Do you think she had the power to bind us into silence? To make us powerful sorceresses?”
“She had the power to scare us out of our wits, but we were young and very stupid, as I remember.”
