“You had a looking glass that sweet Turtle Heart made for you, and you looked in it as if you could see other worlds, other times.”
“I was probably looking at myself.”
But they both knew that wasn’t true, and Frex, for once, said so. “You didn’t look at yourself,” he said, “you hated to. You hated your skin, your sharp features, your strange eyes.”
“Where did I learn that hate?” she asked.
“You were born knowing it,” he said. “It was a curse. You were born to curse my life.” He patted her hand affectionately, as if he didn’t mean much by this. “When you lost your weird baby teeth, and your second teeth came in normally, we all relaxed a little. But for the first couple of years—until Nessarose was born—you were a little beast. Only when saintly Nessarose was delivered to us, even more scarred than you, did you settle down like a normal child.”
“Why was I cursed to be different?” she said. “You are a holy man, you must know.”
“You are my fault,” he said. Despite his words he was somehow pinning blame on her instead of himself, though she still wasn’t clever enough to see how this was done. “For what I had failed to do, you were born to plague me. But don’t worry yourself about it now,” he added, “that’s all long ago.”
“And Nessarose?” she asked. “How do the weights and balances of shame and guilt account for her?”
“She is a portrait of the lax morals of your mother,” Frex said calmly.
“And that’s why you could love her so much,” said the Witch. “Because her human frailty wasn’t your fault.”
“Don’t stew so, you always stewed,” Frex said. “And now she is dead, so what does it matter?”
“My life is still running on.”
“But mine is running out,” he answered, sadly. So she put his hand back on his lap, and kissed him gently, and folded up the page of the Grimmerie and tucked it in her pocket. Then she turned to greet the person approaching them across the lawn. She thought it was someone with tea (Frex was still accorded a measure of service, due to his age and his mildness, and, she supposed, his vocation), but she stood and pressed down the front of her homespun black skirt when she saw who it was.
“Miss Glinda of the Arduennas,” she said, her heart churring.
“Oh, you came, I knew you would,” said Glinda. “Miss Elphaba, the last true Eminent Thropp, no matter what they say!”
Glinda approached slowly, either through age or shyness, or because her ridiculous gown weighed so much that it was hard for her to get up enough steam to stride. She looked like a huge Glindaberry bush, was all the Witch could think; under that skirt there must be a bustle the size of the dome of Saint Florix. There were sequins and furbelows and a sort of History of Oz, it seemed, stitched in trapunto in six or seven ovoid panels all around the skirting. But her face: beneath the powdered skin, the wrinkles at eyelid and mouth, was the face of the timid schoolgirl from the Pertha Hills.
“You haven’t changed a whit,” said Glinda. “Is this your father?”
The Witch nodded but shushed her; Frex had dropped off again. “Come, we’ll walk in the gardens before they root up the roses out of some beknighted attempt at eradicating injustice.” The Witch took Glinda’s arm. “Glinda, you look hideous in that getup. I thought you’d have developed some sense by now.”
“When in the provinces,” she said, “you have to show them a little style. I don’t think it’s so bad. Or are the satin bells at the shoulder a bit too too?”
“Excessive,” agreed the Witch. “Someone get the scissors; this is a disaster.”
They laughed. “My dear, what they’ve done to this grand old place,” said Glinda. “Look, those pediments are meant to support graven urns, and those revolutionary slogans are painted all over that exquisite belvedere. I hope you’ll have something done, Elphie. There isn’t a belvedere to match that outside of the capital.”
“I never had the love of architecture that you did, Glinda,” said the Witch. “I just read the slogans: she walked all over us. Why shouldn’t they paint all over her belvedere? If she did in fact walk all over them?”
“Tyrants come and go, belvederes are forever,” said Glinda. “I can recommend topnotch restorers the moment you ask.”
“I hear you were one of the first on the scene,” said the Witch, “when Nessarose died. How did that come to be?”
“Sir Chuffrey—my hubby—he has some investments in pork futures, you know, and Munchkinland is trying to diversify its economic base so as not to be at the mercy of Gillikin banks and the Emerald City Corn Exchange. You never know what relationship might develop between Munchkinland and the rest of Oz, and it’s best to be prepared. So where Sir Chuffrey does business, I do good. It’s a partnership made in heaven. You know I have more money than I can give away?” She giggled and squeezed the Witch’s arm. “I never imagined that doing public charity would provide such a rush.”
“So you were here in Munchkinland—?”
“Yes, I had been at an orphanage on the shores of Mossmere, and for a lark I thought I’d go to the game park—they have dragons there now, and I’d never seen a dragon—so I was scarcely a dozen miles away when the storm hit. We had terrible winds even there; I cannot imagine how a ceremony could have been in progress in Center Munch. In Mossmere there were whole sections of the park closed to visitors due to the fear of falling trees and escaping Animals—”
“Oh, so they call it a game park, with Animals?” said the Witch.
“You must go, dear, it’s a lark. Well, as I was saying, the house came right out of the blue, and I suppose I mean that literally—if they’d sensed a big storm, they’d surely have canceled the event and run for cover. Anyway, the news system is very advanced now in parts of Munchkinland; Nessarose herself oversaw a system of beacons and tiktok code signals, to warn of invasions from the Wizard and points west. So it was only a matter of minutes before the news was being flashed in all directions. I commandeered a Mature Pfenix and asked her to bring me to Center Munch, and I arrived before most of the locals had quite figured out what had hit them.”
“Tell me about it,” said the Witch.
