Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West

  Liir peered into the clammy shaft. “What if there are spiders?”

  “Spiders hate water,” said Manek authoritatively. “Don’t worry about spiders.”

  “Why don’t you do it?” said Liir.

  “You’re not strong enough to lower me, that’s why,” said Manek patiently.

  “Don’t hide far away,” said Liir. “Don’t let me down too far. Don’t push the cover on all the way, I don’t like the dark.”

  “You’re always complaining,” Manek said, giving him a hand. “That’s why we don’t like you, you know.”

  “Well, everybody’s mean to me,” Liir said.

  “Crouch down now. Hold on to the ropes with both hands. If the bucket scrapes against the wall a little bit just push yourself away. I’ll let it down slowly.”

  “Where are you going to hide?” Liir said. “There isn’t anyplace else in this room.”

  “I’ll hide under the stairs. She’ll never find me in the shadows, she hates spiders.”

  “I thought you said there weren’t any spiders!”

  “She thinks there are,” Manek said. “One two three. This is really a good idea, Liir. You’re so brave.” He grunted with the effort. Liir was heavier in the bucket than he had figured, and the rope spooled too quickly. It jammed in the joint between the windlass and the struts, and the bucket stopped and smashed against the wall with an echoing thud.

  “That was too fast,” came Liir’s voice, ghostly in the gloom.

  “Oh, don’t be a sissy,” Manek said. “Now shhh, I’m going to pivot the cover back on partway, so she won’t guess. Don’t make any noise.”

  “I think there’s fish down here.”

  “Of course there are, it’s a fishwell.”

  “Well, I’m awfully near the water. Do they jump?”

  “Yes they jump, and they have sharp teeth, you ninny, and they like fat little boys,” said Manek. “Of course they don’t jump. Would I put you in danger like that if they did? Honestly, you don’t trust me at all, do you?” He sighed, as if disappointed beyond words, and when the cover slid all the way on instead of part way, he noted without surprise that Liir was too hurt to complain.

  Manek hid under the stairs for a little while. When Nor didn’t come down he decided that behind the altar skirts of the old musty chapel would be an even better hiding place. “Be right back, Liir,” he hissed, but since Liir didn’t answer Manek guessed he was still nursing his grievances.

  Sarima was taking a rare turn in the kitchen, concocting a stew out of limp vegetables from the keeping room. The sisters were having a dance recital amongst themselves in the music room overhead. “Sounds like a herd of elephants,” Sarima said, when Auntie Guest came wandering through, looking for something to snack on.

  “I didn’t expect to see you here,” said Elphaba. “You know, I have a complaint to lodge against your children.”

  “The sweet little vandals, what now,” Sarima said, stirring. “Have they been putting spiders in your bedsheets again?”

  “I wouldn’t mind spiders. At least the crows could eat them. No, Sarima, the children rifle through my belongings, they tease Chistery unmercifully, and they will not listen when I talk to them. Can’t you do anything with them?”

  “What’s to be done?” said Sarima. “Here, taste this rutabaga, is it gone to the dogs?”

  “Even Killyjoy wouldn’t touch this,” decided Elphie. “You better stick with the carrots. I think those children are ungovernable, Sarima. Oughtn’t they be off to school?”

  “Oh yes, in a better life they would be, but how can they?” said their mother placidly. “I’ve already told you that they’re sitting targets for ambitious Arjiki tribesmen. It’s bad enough even to let them run around on the slopes near Kiamo Ko in the summer, I never know when they’re going to be found, trussed, and bled like a pig, and brought home for burying. It’s the cost of widowhood, Auntie; we must do the best we can.”

  “I was a good child,” Elphie said stoutly. “I took care of my little sister, who was horribly disfigured from birth. I obeyed my father, and my mother until she died. I tramped around as a missionary child and gave testimonials to the Unnamed God even though I was essentially faithless. I believed in obedience, and I don’t believe it hurt me.”

  “Then what did hurt you?” asked Sarima wittily.

  “You won’t listen,” said Elphie, “so I won’t even say. But for whatever reasons, your children are ungovernable. I disapprove of your lax ways.”

  “Oh, children are good at heart,” Sarima said, intent on scraping carrots. “They are so innocent and gay. It cheers me up to see them dashing about the house in this game or that. All too soon these precious days will be past, dear Auntie, and then we will look back on when this house was filled with peals of childish laughter.”

  “Fiendish laughter.”

  “There is something inherently good about children,” said Sarima decidedly, warming to the subject. “You know that little Ozma, who all those years ago was deposed by the Wizard? They say that she is off someplace, frozen in a cave—perhaps even in the Kells, for all I know. She’s preserved in her childhood innocence because the Wizard hasn’t the courage to kill her. One day she’ll come back to rule Oz, and she’ll be the best and wisest sovereign we ever had, because of the wisdom of youth.”

  “I’ve never believed in child saviors,” Elphaba said. “As far as I’m concerned, children are the ones who need saving.”

  “You’re just cross because the children have such high spirits.”

  “Your children are evil sprites,” Elphie said, in a snit.

  “My children aren’t evil, nor were my sisters and I evil children.”

  “Your children aren’t good,” said Elphie.

  “Well, how do you judge Liir in this regard, then?”

  “Oh, Liir,” Elphie said, and made an expression, and said pfaaaah, with her tongue and hands. Sarima was about to pursue this—a matter she had long been curious about—when Three came rushing into the kitchen.

  “The passes below us must have melted sooner than usual,” she said, “for we have sighted a caravan struggling its way over the Locklimb Trail, coming from the north! It’ll be here by tomorrow!”

  “Oh, rapture,” Sarima said, “and the castle such a mess! This always happens. Why don’t we learn? Quick, call the children and we’ll have to organize a scrub and polish. You never know, Auntie, it could be an honored guest. You have to be prepared.”

  Manek and Nor and Irji came running from their game. Three told them the news, and they immediately had to dash up the highest tower to see what they could see through the slackening rain, and to wave aprons and handkerchiefs. Yes, there was a caravan, five or six skarks and a small wagon, pulling through the snow and the mud, having trouble fording this stream, stopping to mend a split wheel, stopping to feed the skarks! It was a wonderful treat, and all through the dinner meal of vegetable soup the children chattered away at the surprises they might find among the passengers in the caravan. “They’ve never stopped thinking their father is going to come back,” said Sarima under her breath to Elphaba. “This excitement is a hope for him, though they don’t remember it.”

  “Where is Liir?” asked Four, “it’s a perfect waste of good soup when he doesn’t show up on time. He shan’t get any if he comes whining to me afterward. Children, where is Liir?”

  “He was playing with us earlier. Maybe he fell asleep,” said Irji.

  “Let’s go set a bonfire and smoke the travelers a hello,” said Manek, leaping from the table.

  9

  It was lunchtime when the skarks and the wagon began the final, difficult ascent up the slope to the castle portcullis and the gates of jasper and oak. The townspeople came out from their hovels and leaned their weight against the carriage, helping it through the ruts of mud and ice, until at last it turned in and crossed the open drawbridge. Elphaba, her curiosity as piqued as anyone else’s, stood with the Dowager Princess of
the Arjikis and her sisters on a parapet above the crudely carved front doorway. The children waited in the cobblestoned yard below, all but Liir.

  The leader, a grizzed young man, made the faintest mountain obeisance to Sarima. The skarks defecated sloppily on the cobbles, to the delight of the children, who had never seen skark fewmets before. Then the leader went to the cabin and opened the door, and climbed inside. They could hear his voice, raised loudly as if talking to someone hard of hearing.

  They waited. The sky was a piercing blue, really almost a spring blue, and the icicles hung from the eaves in dangerous daggers, melting like mad. The sisters all sucked in their stomachs, cursing the extra piece of gingerbread, the honeyed cream in the coffee, vowing to do better. Please, sweet Lurlina, let it be a man.

  The leader came out again, and proffered a hand, and he helped a figure alight from the cabin: an old, creaky-limbed figure, in sad dark skirts and a hideously out-fashioned bonnet, even from the provincial point of view.

  But Elphaba was leaning forward, cleaving the air with her sharp chin and hatchet nose, and sniffing like a beast. The visitor turned and the sun struck her face.

  “Good glory,” breathed Elphie. “It’s my old Nanny!” And she left the parapet to run and gather the old woman in her arms.

  “Human feeling, will you look at that,” said Four, sniffily. “I wouldn’t have guessed her capable.” For Auntie Guest was all but sobbing with pleasure.

  The caravan leader wouldn’t stay for a meal, but Nanny with her valises and trunks clearly did not intend to go any farther. She settled in a small musty room just below Elphaba’s, and took the endless time it takes the elderly to make her toilet. By the time she was ready to be sociable, dinner was served. A gamey old hen, more rope than flesh, lay in a thin pepper sauce on one of the good salvers. The children were dressed in their best, and allowed this once to dine in the formal hall. Nanny came in on the arm of Elphaba, and sat at her right hand. Because this was a visitor to Elphie, the sisters had kindly put Elphie’s napkin ring at the foot of the table, opposite Sarima—a place by custom left vacant, in honor of poor dead Fiyero. It was a big mistake, and they would recognize it almost immediately, as Elphaba never relinquished her advancement. But for now all was smiles and savory hospitality. The only small annoyance (besides that Nanny wasn’t a young eligible princeling looking for a bride) was that Liir still conducted his campaign of sullen disappearance. The children didn’t know where he was.

  Nanny was a tired and fruity old woman, skin cracked like dried soap, hair thin and yellowy white, hands with veins as prominent as the cords around a good Arjiki goat cheese. She communicated wheezily, with lots of pauses to breathe and think, that she had heard through someone named Crope, in the Emerald City, that her old charge Elphaba had attended Tibbett in his last days at the Cloister of Saint Glinda outside the Emerald City. No one in the family had heard from Elphaba in years and years, and Nanny had decided to take it upon herself to find her. The maunts were reluctant at first, but Nanny had persisted, and then she had waited until a new caravan was ready to leave. The maunts had told her about Elphaba’s mission in Kiamo Ko, and Nanny had booked passage the following spring. And here she was.

  “And of the outside world?” asked Two eagerly. Let them catch up on family gossip on their own time.

  “What do you mean?” said Nanny.

  “Politics, science, fashion, the arts, the driving edge!” said Two.

  “Well, our redoubtable Wizard has crowned himself Emperor,” said Nanny. “Did you know that?”

  They hadn’t heard. “By whose authority?” asked Five, scoffing, “And furthermore, Emperor over what?”

  “There isn’t anyone who has any more authority, he said,” said Nanny calmly, “and who could argue with that? He’s in the business of handing out honors annually as it is. He just tacked on an extra one for himself. As for Emperor over what, I couldn’t say. Some people whisper that this implies expansionist aims. But where he could expand to—I couldn’t say, I just couldn’t. Into the desert? Beyond, to Quox, or Ix, or Fliaan?”

  “Or does he mean to have a more tight-fisted hold on terrain he’s only loosely governed,” asked Elphaba, “like the Vinkus?” She felt a chill, like an old wound deep beneath her breastbone.

  “No one is particularly happy,” said Nanny. “There is an enforced conscription now, and the Gale Force threatens to outnumber the Royal Army. One doesn’t know if there could be an internal struggle for power, and the Wizard is preparing against an eventual takeover attempt. How can one have an opinion about such things? Old and female as we are?” She smiled to include them all. The sisters and Sarima glared as youthfully as they could back at her.

  10

  The next day hardly dawned at all, so gloomy with rain, so glowery with featureless clouds.

  In the parlor, waiting for Nanny to emerge and continue her obligation of entertaining them, the sisters and Sarima discussed what new facts they had learned about their Auntie Guest. “Elphaba,” mused Two. “It’s a pretty enough name. Where does it come from?”

  “I remember,” said Five, who had once gone through a faintly religious phase when she realized marriage possibilities were growing dim. “I had a Lives of the Saints once. Saint Aelphaba of the Waterfall—she was a Munchkinlander mystic, six or seven centuries ago. Don’t you remember? She wanted to pray, but she was of such beauty that the local men kept pestering her for—attention.”

  They all sighed, in chorus.

  “To preserve her sanctity, she went into the wilderness with her holy scriptures and a single bunch of grapes. Wild beasts threatened her, and wild men hunted after her, and she was sore distressed. Then she came upon a huge waterfall coursing off a cliff. She said, ‘This is my cave,’ and took off all her clothes, and she walked right through the screen of pounding water. Beyond was a cavern hollowed out by the splashing water. She sat down there, and in the light that came through the wall of water she read her holy book and pondered on spiritual matters. She ate a grape every now and then. When at last she had finished her grapes, she emerged from the cave. Hundreds of years had passed. There was a village built on the banks of the stream, and even a milldam nearby. The villagers shrank in horror, for as children they had all played in the cavern behind the waterfall—lovers had trysted there—murders and foul deeds had taken place there—treasure had been buried there—and never had anyone ever seen Saint Aelphaba in her naked beauty. But all Saint Aelphaba had to do was open her mouth and speak the old speech, and they all knew that it must be she, and they built a chapel in her honor. She blessed the children and the elderly, and heard the confessions of the middle-aged, and healed some sick and fed some hungry, that sort of stuff, and then disappeared behind the waterfall again with another bunch of grapes. I think a bigger bunch this time. And that’s the last anyone has seen of her.”

  “So you can disappear and not be dead,” said Sarima, looking out the window a little dreamily, past the rain.

  “If you’re a saint,” said Two pointedly.

  “If you even believe it,” said Elphaba, who had come into the parlor during the end of the recitation. “The reemerging Saint Aelphaba might have been some hussy from the next town over who wanted to give gullible peasants a good going over.”

  “That’s doubt for you, it scours hope out of everything,” Sarima said dismissively. “Auntie, you kill me sometimes, you really do.”

  “I think it would be charming to call you Elphaba,” said Six, “because that is a charming story. And it’s nice to hear your real name on Nanny’s lips.”

  “Don’t you try it,” said Elphie. “If Nanny can’t help herself, so be it; she’s ancient and it’s hard to change. But not you.”

  Six pursed her lips as if to make an argument, but just then there was a clattering of feet from downstairs, and Nor and Irji burst into the room.

  “We found Liir!” they said. “Come on, we think he’s dead! He’s fallen in the fishwell!”
r />   They all pounded down the stairs to the basement. Chistery had been the one to find him. The snow monkey’s nose had wrinkled when he and the boys passed the fishwell, and he had whined, and whimpered, and tugged at the weighted cover. Nor and Irji had had an idea to lower him down in the bucket then, but when they swiveled the cover off, the lurid gleam of light on pale human flesh had terrified them.

  Manek came running when he heard the noise of his mother and the others exclaiming before the well. They pulled Liir up. The water had risen, what with continued melting and the further rain. Liir was like a corpse left in a stream, bloated. “Oh, is that where he was,” said Manek in a funny voice. “You know he said he wanted to go down in that fishwell once.”

  “Get away, children, you shouldn’t see this, go upstairs,” Sarima said, scolding. “Come on now, behave, upstairs for you.” They didn’t know what they were looking at and they were afraid to look too closely.

  “I cannot believe it, this is so terrible,” said Manek excitedly, and Elphaba gave him a sharp, hateful look.

  “Obey your mother,” she snapped, and Manek made a nasty face, but he and Irji and Nor clomped upstairs, and huddled around the open doorway at the top to listen, and peer.

  “Oh, who has the art of medicine in their hands, have you, Auntie?” asked Sarima. “Quick now, there may be time. You have the arts, don’t you, you studied the life sciences! What can you do?”

  “Irji, go get Nanny, tell her it’s an emergency,” shouted Elphie. “We’ll bring him up to the kitchen, gently now. No, Sarima, I don’t know enough.”

  “Use your spells, use your magic!” exclaimed Five.

  “Bring him back,” urged Six, and Three added, “You can do it, don’t be hidden and shy about it now!”