The Wicked Years Complete Collection

by Gregory Maguire

  “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.

  “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 devoted 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 t
oo.

  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.”

  “Forget the details,” said the Witch tartly. “I just mean, Glinda, is it possible we could be living our entire adult lives under someone’s spell? How could we tell if we were the pawns of someone’s darker game? I know, I know, I can see it in your face: Elphie, you’re sniffing conspiracy theories again. But you were there. You heard what I heard. How do you know your life hasn’t been pulled by the strings of some malign magic?”

  “Well, I pray a lot,” said Glinda, “not terribly genuinely, I admit, but I try. I think the Unnamed God would have mercy on me and give me the benefit of the doubt, and release me from a spell if I had accidentally fallen under one. Don’t you? Or are you still so atheistic?”

  “I have always felt like a pawn,” said the Witch. “My skin color’s been a curse, my missionary parents made me sober and intense, my school days brought me up against political crimes against Animals, my love life imploded and my lover died, and if I had any life’s work of my own, I haven’t found it yet, except in animal husbandry, if you could call it that.”

  “I’m no pawn,” said Glinda. “I take all the credit in the world for my own foolishness. Good gracious, dear, all of life is a spell. You know that. But you do have some choice.”

  “Well, I wonder,” said the Witch.

  They walked on. Graffiti was splattered on the sides of the granite plinths of statues. NOW THE SHOE’S ON THE OTHER FOOT. Glinda tchtched. “Animal husbandry?” she said.

  They crossed a little bridge. Bluebirds twinkled music above them like a sentimental entertainment.

  “I sent this Dorothy, this girl, on to the Emerald City,” said Glinda. “I told her I’d never seen the Wizard—well, I had to lie, don’t look at me like that; if I told her the truth about him she would never have left here. I told her to ask him to send her home. With his reconnaissance spies all over Oz, and no doubt elsewhere, he has heard of Kansas, I’m sure. Nobody else has.”

  “That was a cruel thing to do,” said the Witch.

  “She’s such a harmless child, no one should take her seriously,” said Glinda carelessly. “If the Munchkinlanders started rallying around her, reunification might be a more bloody affair than we all hope.”

  “So you hope for reunification?” muttered the Witch, disgusted. “You support it?”

  “Besides,” Glinda went on blithely, “having some motherly instinct somewhere inside this pushed-up bosom of mine, I gave her Nessa’s shoes as a sort of protection.”

  “You what?” The Witch whirled and faced Glinda. For a moment she was dumb with rage, but only for a moment. “Not only does she come whomping out of the sky and stepping her big clumsy house all over my sister, but she gets the shoes too? Glinda, those shoes weren’t yours to give away! My father made them for her! And furthermore, Nessa promised I could have them when she died!”

  “Oh yes,” said Glinda in a false calm, surveying the Witch up and down, “and they would make the perfect accessory for that glass-of-fashion outfit you have on. Come on, Elphie, since when have you cared about shoes, of all things? Look at those army boots you have on!”

  “Whether I’d wear them or not is none of your concern. You can’t go handing out a person’s effects like that, what right had you? Papa reshaped those shoes from skills he learned from Turtle Heart. You’ve stuck your fancy wand in where it wasn’t wanted!”

  “I’ll remind you,” said Glinda, “that those shoes were coming apart until I had them resoled, and I laced them through with a special binding spell of my own. Neither your father nor you did that much for her. Elphie, I stood by her when you abandoned her in Shiz. As you abandoned me. You did, don’t deny it, stop those lightning bolt looks at me, I won’t have it. I became her surrogate sister. And as an old friend I gave her the power to stand upright by herself through those shoes, and if I made a mistake I’m sorry, Elphie, but I still feel they were more mine to give away than yours.”

  “Well, I want them back,” said the Witch.

  “Oh, put it behind you, will you, they’re only shoes,” said Glinda, “you’re behaving as if they’re holy relics. They were shoes, and a bit out of style, truth be told. Let the girl have them. She has nothing else.”

  “Look how the people here thought of them,” said the Witch; she pointed to a stable on which was scrawled, in broad red letters, walk all over you you old witch.

  “Please, give it a rest,” said Glinda, “I have such a headache coming on.”

  “Where is she?” said the Witch. “If you won’t retrieve them, I’ll get them myself.”

  “If I’d known you wanted them,” said Glinda, trying to make things all right, “I’d have saved them for you. But you have to see, Elphie, the shoes couldn’t stay here. The ignorant pagan Munchkinlanders—Lurlinists all, once you scratch the skin—they had put too much credit in those silly shoes. I mean, a magic sword I could understand, but shoes? Please. I had to get them out of Munchkinland.”

  “You are working in collusion with the Wizard to render Munchkinland ready for annexation,” said the Witch. “You have no agenda of charity, Glinda. At least don’t fool yourself. Or are you really under some rusty spell of Madame Morrible, after all this time?”

  “I won’t have you snapping at me,” said Glinda. “The girl has left, she’s been on the road for a week now, she headed west. I tell you, she’s only a timid child, and means no harm. She’d be distressed to know she’d taken something you wanted. There is no power in them for you, Elp
hie.”

  The Witch said, “Glinda, if those shoes fall into the hands of the Wizard, he’ll use them somehow in a maneuver to reannex Munchkinland. By now they have too much significance to Munchkinlanders. The Wizard mustn’t have those shoes!”

  Glinda reached out and touched the Witch’s elbow. “They won’t make your father love you any better,” she said.

  The Witch pulled back. They stood glaring at each other. They had too much common history to come apart over a pair of shoes, yet the shoes were planted between them, a grotesque icon of their differences. Neither one could retreat, or move forward. It was silly, and they were stuck, and someone needed to break the spell. But all the Witch could do was insist, “I want those shoes.”

  4

  At the memorial service, Glinda and Sir Chuffrey perched in the balcony reserved for dignitaries and ambassadors. The Wizard sent a representative, resplendent in his dress reds with the emerald cross marking quadrants on his chest, a crew of bodyguards at attention all around him. The Witch sat below, and did not meet Glinda’s eyes. Frex wept until he brought on an attack of asthma, and the Witch helped him out a side door, where he could catch his breath.

  After the service, the Wizard’s emissary approached the Witch. He said, “You have been invited to an audience with the Wizard. He is traveling by special diplomatic immunity, via a Pfenix, to offer his condolences to the family this evening. You will be prepared to meet him at Colwen Grounds this evening.”

  “He can’t come here!” said the Witch. “He wouldn’t dare!”

  “Those who now make the decisions think otherwise,” said the emissary. “Be that as it may, he comes under cover of darkness, and only to speak to you and your family.”

  “My father is not up to receiving the Wizard,” said the Witch. “I won’t have it.”

  “He will see you, then,” said the emissary. “He insists. He has questions of a diplomatic nature to put to you. But you are not to make this visit public, or it could go very hard on your father and your brother. And on you,” he added, as if that were not already evident.