I see myself there: the girl witness, wide-eyed as Dorothy. Staring at a world too horrible to comprehend, believing—by dint of ignorance and innocence—that beneath this unbreakable contract of guilt and blame there is always an older contract that may bind and release in a more salutary way. A more ancient precedent of ransom, that we may not always be tormented by our shame. Neither Dorothy nor young Elphaba can speak of this, but the belief of it is in both our faces . . .
The Witch had taken the green glass bottle, whose label still read miracle eli-, and placed it on her bedside table. She took a spoonful of the ancient elixir before sleeping, hoping for miracles, seeking some version of the fabulous alibi Dorothy was unwinding, that she had come from a country somehow other—not the real states across the desert, but a whole separate geophysical existence. Even metaphysical. The Wizard made such a claim for himself, and if the dwarf was right, the Witch had this ancestry too. At night she tried to train herself to look on the periphery of her dreams, to note the details. It was a little like trying to see around the edges of a mirror, but, she found, more rewarding.
But what did she get? Everything flickered, like a guttering candle but more harshly, more stridently. People moved in short, jerky motions. They were colorless, they were vapid, they were drugged, they were manic. Buildings were high and cruel. Winds were strong. The Wizard stepped in and out of these pictures, a very humble-looking man in this context. In one window, in a shop from which the Wizard was emerging rather dejectedly, she thought, she caught some words once, and willed herself with tremendous effort to wake up so she cou
ld write them down. But they didn’t make any sense to her. no irish need apply.
Then one night she had a nightmare. Again the Wizard began it. He walked over some hills of sand, with tall gray grasses blowing in a fierce gale—a thousand thousand grasses like the scratchy sedge with which the old Quadling matriarch had struck Frex—and the Wizard stopped along a broad flat stretch. He stepped out of his clothes, and looked at a timepiece in his hands, as if memorizing an historic instant. Then he walked forward, naked and broken. When the Witch realized what he was approaching, she tried to back out of the dream with a howl, but could not manage to disengage herself. This was the mythical ocean, and the Wizard walked into water up to his knees, his thighs, his waist; he paused and shivered, and slopped water over the rest of himself as a kind of penance. Then he kept walking, and disappeared entirely into the sea, as Saint Aelphaba of the Waterfall had disappeared behind her watery veil. The sea rocked like an earthquake, vomiting against the sandy shore, pounding in a kettledrum commotion. There was no Other Side to it. It threw the Wizard back, again and again, though again and again he forged in, more and more exhausted. The stoicism, the determination: no wonder he had managed to overcome a nation. The dream ended with him washed back on shore one last time, weeping with frustration.
She woke, gagging, terrified beyond telling, salt in her nostrils. Thereafter she avoided the miracle elixir. Instead, she concocted a potion derived both from Nanny’s recipe book and the Grimmerie’s marginalia, on how to keep awake. If she fell asleep again, she would be prey to that vision of earthly destruction, and she would rather die.
Nanny didn’t have very much to say about nightmares. “Your mother had them too,” she remarked at last. “She used to say she saw the unknown city of anger in her dreams. She was so enraged over how you turned out, you know—I mean physically, dear, don’t look like that at me: a green girl isn’t easy for any mother to explain away—that she gulped down those pills like candy when Nessarose was expected. If Nessarose were still around to take up a grudge, she could blame you, in a way, for what happened to her.”
“But where did you get that green bottle?” said the Witch into Nanny’s good ear. “Look at it, Nanny dear, and try to remember.”
“I suspect I bought it at a jumble sale,” she said. “I could stretch a penny, believe me.”
You could stretch the truth even further, thought the Witch. She suppressed a desire to smash the green glass. How deeply bound by cords of family anger we all are, thought the Witch. None of us breaks free.
12
One afternoon a few weeks later, Liir came back from a ramble all hot and bothered. The Witch hated to hear that he had been hobnobbing again with the Wizard’s soldiers down in Red Windmill.
“They had news, a dispatch from the Emerald City,” he said. “A delegation of strangers got in to see the Wizard. And just a girl! Dorothy, they said, a girl from the Other Land. And some friends. The Wizard hasn’t allowed an audience with his subjects in years—he works through ministers, they say. A lot of soldiers think he died long ago, and it’s a Palace plot to safeguard the peace. But Dorothy and her friends got in, and they saw him, and told everyone what it was like!”
“Well well,” said the Witch. “Imagine that. All of Oz, Loyal and Otherwise, is yapping about this Dorothy. What did the fools say next?”
“The dispatch soldier said that the guests asked the Wizard to grant them some wishes. The Scarecrow asked for a brain, Nick Chopper the Tin Woodman asked for a heart, and the Cowardly Lion asked for courage.”
“And I suppose Dorothy asked for a shoe horn?”
“Dorothy asked to be sent home.”
“I hope she gets her wish. And?”
But Liir got coy.
“Oh come on, I’m too old to be put off my supper by gossip,” she snapped.
Liir looked flushed with guilty pleasure. “The soldiers said that the Wizard had rejected the odd requests.”
“And you’re so very surprised?”
“The Wizard told Dorothy that he would grant them their wishes—when they had—when they had—”
“You haven’t stuttered in years. Don’t start again, or I’ll beat you.”
“Dorothy and his friends have to come here and kill you,” he finished. “The soldiers said it’s because you murdered an old lady in Shiz, a famous old lady, and you’re an assassin. Also you’re crazy, they said.”
“I’m a more likely murderer than those incompetent vagabonds could be,” she said. “He was just trying to get rid of them. Probably he’s instructed his own Gale Forcers to slit the girl’s throat as soon as she’s safely out of the limelight.” And no doubt the Wizard had confiscated the shoes. It galled her. But how flattered she felt that the news of her attack had gotten out. By now she was sure she had killed Madame Morrible. It only made sense that she had.
But Liir shook his head. “The funny thing,” he said, “is that Dorothy is called Dorothy Gale. The soldiers at Red Windmill said the Gale Forcers wouldn’t touch her, they’re too superstitious.”
“What do these soldiers know of intrigue, stationed here out at the edge of the moon?”
Liir shrugged. “Aren’t you impressed that the Wizard of Oz even knows who you are? Are you a murderer?”
“Oh Liir, you’ll understand when you’re older. Or anyway not understanding will become second nature, and it won’t matter. I wouldn’t harm you, if that’s what you mean. But you sound so surprised that I should be known in the Emerald City. Just because you disobey me and treat me like refuse, do you think the whole world does?” Yet she was pleased. “But you know, Liir, if there’s even the slightest chance that there’s any truth to these rumors, you had better stay away from Red Windmill for a while. They might kidnap you and hold you for ransom until I give myself up to this schoolgirl and her needy companions.”
