Galinda

I

Wittica, Settica, Wiccasand Turning, Red Sand, Dixxi House, change at Dixxi House for Shiz; stay aboard this coach for all points East; Tenniken, Brox Hall, and all destinations to Traum”—the conductor paused to catch his breath—“next stop Wittica, Wittica next!”

Galinda clutched her parcel of clothes to her breast. The old goat who sprawled on the seat across from her was missing the Wittica stop. She was glad that trains made passengers sleepy. She didn’t want to keep avoiding his eye. At the last minute before she was to board the train, her minder, Ama Clutch, had stepped on a rusty nail and, terrified of the frozen-face syndrome, had begged permission to go to the nearest surgery for medicines and calming spells. “I can surely get myself to Shiz alone,” Galinda had said coldly, “don’t bother with me, Ama Clutch.” And Ama Clutch hadn’t. Galinda hoped that Ama Clutch would suffer a little frozenness of jaw before being well enough to show up in Shiz and chaperone Galinda through whatever was to come.

Her own chin was set, she believed, to imply a worldly boredom with train travel. In fact she had never been more than a day’s carriage ride away from her family home in the little market town of Frottica. The railway line, laid down a decade ago, had meant that old dairy farms were being cut up for country estates for the merchants and manufacturers of Shiz. But Galinda’s family continued to prefer rural Gillikin, with its fox haunts, its dripping dells, its secluded ancient pagan temples to Lurline. To them, Shiz was a distant urban threat, and even the convenience of rail transportation hadn’t tempted them to risk all its complications, curiosities, and evil ways.

Galinda didn’t see the verdant world through the glass of the carriage; she saw her own reflection instead. She had the nearsightedness of youth. She reasoned that because she was beautiful she was significant, though what she signified, and to whom, was not clear to her yet. The sway of her head made her creamy ringlets swing, catching the light, like so many jostling stacks of coins. Her lips were perfect, as pouted as an opening maya flower, and colored as brilliantly red. Her green traveling gown with its inset panels of ochre musset suggested wealth, while the black shawl draping just so about the shoulders was a nod to her academic inclinations. She was, after all, on her way to Shiz because she was smart.

But there was more than one way to be smart.

She was seventeen. The whole town of Frottica had seen her off. The first girl from the Pertha Hills to be accepted at Shiz! She had written well in the entrance exams, a meditation on Learning Ethics from the Natural World. (“Do Flowers Regret Being Plucked for a Bouquet? Do the Rains Practice Abstinence? Can Animals Really Choose to Be Good? Or: A Moral Philosophy of Springtime.”) She had quoted excessively from the Oziad, and her rapturous prose had captivated the board of examiners. A three-year fellowship to Crage Hall. It wasn’t one of the better colleges—those were still closed to female students. But it was Shiz University.

Her companion in the compartment, waking up when the conductor came back through, stretched his heels as he yawned. “Would you be so kind as to reach my ticket, it’s in the overhead,” he said. Galinda stood and found the ticket, aware that the bearded old thing was eyeing her comely figure. “Here you are,” she said, and he answered, “Not to me, dearie, to the conductor. Without opposable thumbs, I have no hope of managing such a tiny piece of cardboard.”

The conductor punched the ticket, and said, “You’re the rare beast that can afford to travel first class.”

“Oh,” said the goat, “I object to the term beast. But the laws still allow my traveling in first class, I presume?”

“Money’s money,” said the conductor, without ill will, punching Galinda’s ticket and returning it to her.

“No, money’s not money,” said the goat, “not when my ticket cost double what the young lady’s did. In this case, money is a visa. I happen to have it.”

“Going up to Shiz, are you?” said the conductor to Galinda, ignoring the goat’s remark. “I can tell by that academic shawl.”

“Oh well, it’s something to do,” said Galinda. She didn’t care to talk to conductors. But when he continued along down the carriage, Galinda found that she liked even less the baleful look that the goat was giving her.

“Do you expect to learn anything at Shiz?” he asked.

“I have already learned not to speak to strangers.”

“Then I will introduce myself and we will be strangers no longer. I am Dillamond.”

“I am disinclined to know you.”

“I am a Fellow of Shiz University, on the Faculty of Biological Arts.”

You are a shabby dresser, even for a goat, Galinda thought. Money isn’t everything. “Then I must overcome my natural shyness. My name is Galinda. I am of the Arduenna Clan on my mother’s side.”

“Let me be the first to welcome you to Shiz, Glinda. This is your first year?”

“Please, it is Galinda. The proper old Gillikinese pronunciation, if you don’t mind.” She could not bring herself to call him sir. Not with that horrid goatee and the tatty waistcoat that looked cut from some public house carpet.

“I wonder what you think of the Wizard’s proposed Banns on travel?” The goat’s eyes were buttery and warm, and frightening. Galinda had never heard of any Banns. She said as much. Dillamond—was it Doctor Dillamond?—explained in a conversational tone that the Wizard had thoughts of restricting Animal travel on public conveyances except in designated transports. Galinda replied that animals had always enjoyed separate services. “No, I am speaking of Animals,” said Dillamond. “Those with a spirit.”

“Oh, those,” said Galinda crudely. “Well, I don’t see the problem.”

“My, my,” said Dillamond. “Don’t you indeed?” The goatee quivered; he was irritated. He began to hector her about Animal Rights. As things now stood, his own ancient mother couldn’t afford to travel first class, and would have to ride in a pen when she wanted to visit him in Shiz. If the Wizard’s Banns went through the Hall of Approval, as they were likely to do, the goat himself would be required by law to give up the privileges he had earned through years of study, training, and saving. “Is that right for a creature with a spirit?” he said. “From here to there, there to here, in a pen?”

“I quite agree, travel is so broadening,” said Galinda. They endured the rest of the trip, including the change across the platform at Dixxi House, in a frosty silence.

Seeing her fright at the size and bustle of the terminus at Shiz, Dillamond took pity and offered to engage a carriage to take her to Crage Hall. She followed him, looking as unmortified as she could manage. Her luggage came behind, on the backs of a couple of porters.

Shiz! She tried not to gawp. Everyone hustling on business, laughing and hurrying and kissing, dodging carriages, while the buildings of Railway Square, brownstone and bluestone and covered with vine and moss, steamed softly in the sunlight. The animals—and the Animals! She had scarcely ever come across even the odd chicken squawking philosophically in Frottica—but here was a quartet of tsebras at an outdoor café, dressed flashily in black-and-white satin stripes on the bias to their inborn design; and an elephant on its hind legs directing traffic; and a tiger dressed up in some sort of exotic religious garb, a kind of monk or maunt or nun or something. Yes, yes, it was Tsebras, and Elephant, and Tiger, and she supposed Goat. She would have to get used to enunciating the capital letters or else she would show off her country origins.

Mercifully, Dillamond found her a carriage with a human driver, and directed him to Crage Hall and paid him in advance, for which Galinda had to come up with a weak smile of appreciation. “Our paths will cross again,” said Dillamond, gallantly if curtly, as if putting forth a prophecy, and he disappeared as the carriage jolted forward. Galinda sank back into the cushions. She began to be sorry that Ama Clutch had punctured her foot with a nail.

Crage Hall was only twenty minutes from Railway Square. Behind its own bluestone walls, the complex was set with large watery-glass windows in lancet formation. A tessellation of quatrefoils and blind multifoils ran riot at the roofline. The appreciation of architecture was Galinda’s private passion, and she pored over the features she could identify, although the vines and flatmoss fudged many of the finer details of the buildings. Too soon she was whisked inside.

The Headmistress of Crage Hall, a fish-faced upper-class Gillikinese woman wearing a lot of cloisonné bangles, was greeting new arrivals in the atrium. The Head eschewed the drabness of professional women’s dress that Galinda had expected. Instead the imposing woman was bedecked in a currant-colored gown with patterns of black jet swirling over the bodice like dynamic markings on sheet music. “I am Madame Morrible,” she said to Galinda. Her voice was basso profundo, her grip crippling, her posture military, her earrings like holiday tree ornaments. “Flourishes all around, and a quick cup of tea in the parlor. Then we’ll assemble in the Main Hall and sort you out as to roomies.”

The parlor was filled with pretty young women, all wearing green or blue and trailing black shawls like exhausted shadows behind them. Galinda was glad for the natural advantages of her flaxen hair, and stood by a window so the light could dazzle itself off her curls. She hardly sipped the tea. In a side room, the attendant Amas were serving themselves from a metal urn, and laughing and yakking already as if they were old friends from the same village. It was somewhat grotesque, all those dumpy women smiling at each other, making marketplace noise.

Galinda hadn’t read the fine print very closely. She hadn’t realized there would be a need for “roomies.” Or perhaps had her parents paid extra so she could have a private room? And where would Ama Clutch stay? Looking about her, she could tell that some of these dollies came from families much better off than hers. The pearls and diamonds on them! Galinda was glad she had chosen a simple silver collar with mettanite struts. There was something vulgar about traveling in jewels. As she realized this truth, she codified it into a saying. At the earliest perfect opportunity she would bring it out as proof of her having opinions—and of having traveled. “The overdressed traveler betrays more interest in being seen than in seeing,” she murmured, trying it out, “while the true traveler knows that the novel world about her serves as the most appropriate accessory.” Good, very good.

Madame Morrible counted heads, gripped a cup of tea, and shooed everyone into the Main Hall. There Galinda learned that allowing Ama Clutch to go looking for a surgery had been a colossal mistake. Apparently all that chatter among Amas hadn’t been frivolous and social. They had been instructed to sort out among them whose young lady would room with whose. The Amas had been relied upon to get to the nub of the matter more quickly than the students themselves. No one had spoken for Galinda—she had gone unrepresented!

After the forgettable welcome remarks, as couple by couple the students and Amas left to locate their lodgings and settle in, Galinda found herself growing pale with embarrassment. Ama Clutch, the old fool, would have fixed her up nicely with someone just a notch or two above on the social ladder! Near enough that Galinda would suffer no shame, and above enough to make it worth the while of socializing. But now, all the better young misses were linked together. Diamond to diamond, emerald to emerald, for all she could tell! As the room began to empty, Galinda wondered if she shouldn’t go up and interrupt Madame Morrible and explain the problem. Galinda was, after all, an Arduenna of the Uplands, at least on one side. It was a hideous accident. Her eyes teared up.

But she hadn’t the nerve. She stayed perched on the edge of the fragile, stupid chair. Except for her, all the centre of the room had cleared out now, and the shyer, more useless girls were left, around the edges, in the shadows. Surrounded by an obstacle course of empty gilded chairs, Galinda alone sat like an unclaimed valise.

“Now the rest of you are here without Amas, I understand,” said Madame Morrible, a bit sniffily. “Since we require chaperonage, I will assign each of you to one of the three dormitories for freshers, which sleep fifteen girls each. There is no social stigma to the dormitory, I might add. None at all.” But she was lying, and not even convincingly.

Galinda finally stood up. “Please, Madame Morrible, there is a mistake. I am Galinda of the Arduennas. My Ama took a nail in her foot on the voyage and was detained for a day or two. I am not in the dormitory class, you see.”

“How sad for you,” said Madame Morrible, smiling. “I’m sure your Ama will be pleased to be a chaperone in, shall we say, the Pink Dormitory? Fourth floor on the right—”

“No, no, she would not,” interrupted Galinda, quite bravely. “I am not here to sleep in a dormitory, Pink or otherwise. You have misunderstood.”

“I have not misunderstood, Miss Galinda,” said Madame Morrible, growing even more fishlike as her eyes began to bulge. “There is accident, there is tardiness, there are decisions to be made. As you were not equipped, through your Ama, to make your own decision, I am empowered to make it for you. Please, we are busy and I must name the other girls who will join you in the Pink Dormitory—”

“I would have a private word with you, Madame,” said Galinda in desperation. “For myself, dormitory partners or a single roomie, it is no matter. But I cannot recommend that you ask my Ama to oversee other girls, for reasons I may not say in public.” She was lying as fast as she could, and better than Madame Morrible, who seemed at least intrigued.

“You strike me as impertinent, Miss Galinda,” she said mildly.

“I have not yet struck you, Madame Morrible.” Galinda delivered the daring line with her sweetest smile.

Madame Morrible chose to laugh, thank Lurline! “A spark of spunk! You may come to my chambers this evening and tell me the story of your Ama’s shortcomings, as I should know them. But I will compromise with you, Miss Galinda. Unless you object, I will have to ask your Ama to chaperone both you and another girl, one who comes without an Ama. For you see, all the other students with Amas are already paired off, and you are the odd one out.”

“I am certain my Ama could manage that, at least.”

Madame Morrible scanned the page of names, and said, “Very well. To join Miss Galinda of the Arduennas in a double room—shall I invite the Thropp Third Descending, of Nest Hardings, Elphaba?”

No one stirred. “Elphaba?” said Madame Morrible again, adjusting her bangles and pressing two fingers at the bottom of her throat.

The girl was in the back of the room, a pauper in a red dress with gaudy fretwork, and in clumpy, old-people’s boots. At first Galinda thought what she saw was some trick of the light, a reflection off the adjacent buildings covered in vines and flatmoss. But as Elphaba moved forward, lugging her own carpetbags, it became obvious that she was green. A hatchet-faced girl with putrescent green skin and long, foreign-looking black hair. “A Munchkinlander by birth, though with many childhood years spent in Quadling Country,” read Madame Morrible from her notes. “How fascinating for us all, Miss Elphaba. We shall look forward to hearing tales of exotic climes and times. Miss Galinda and Miss Elphaba, here are your keys. You may take room twenty-two on the second floor.”

She smiled broadly at Galinda as the girls came forward. “Travel is so broadening,” she intoned. Galinda started, the curse of her own words lobbed back at her. She curtseyed and fled. Elphaba, eyes on the floor, followed behind.

2

By the time Ama Clutch arrived the next day, her foot bandaged to three times its natural size, Elphaba had already unpacked her few belongings. They hung raglike on hooks in the cupboard: thin, shapeless shifts, shamed into a corner by the fulsome hoops and starched bustles and padded shoulders and cushioned elbows of Galinda’s wardrobe. “I am happy as cheese to be your Ama too, don’t matter to me,” said Ama Clutch, smiling broadly in Elphaba’s direction, before Galinda had a chance to get Ama Clutch alone and demand that her minder refuse. “Of course my Papa is paying you to be my Ama,” said Galinda meaningfully, but Ama Clutch answered, “Not as much as all that, duckie, not as much as all that. I can be making up my own mind.”

“Ama,” said Galinda when Elphaba had left to use the mildewy facilities, “Ama, are you blind? That Munchkinlander girl is green.”

“Odd, isn’t it? I thought all Munchkinlanders were tiny. She’s a proper height, though. I guess they come in a variety of sizes. Oh, are you bothered by the green? Well, it might do you some good, if you let it. If you let it. You affect worldly airs, Galinda, but you don’t know the world yet. I think it’s a lark. Why not? Why ever not?”

“It’s not yours to organize my education, worldly or otherwise, Ama Clutch!”

“No, my dear,” said Ama Clutch, “you’ve made this mess all by your lonesome. I’m merely being of service.”

So Galinda was stuck. Last night’s brief interview with Madame Morrible had not provided any escape route, either. Galinda had arrived promptly, in a dotted morpheline skirt with lace bodice, a vision, as she’d said to herself, in nocturnal purples and midnight blues. Madame Morrible bade her enter the reception room, in which a small cluster of leather chairs and a settee were drawn up before an unnecessary fire. The Head poured mint tea and offered crystallized ginger wrapped in pearlfruit leaves. She indicated a chair for Galinda, but herself stood by the mantelpiece like a big game hunter.

In the best tradition of the upper-class savoring its luxuries, they sipped and nibbled in silence at first. This gave Galinda the chance to observe that Madame Morrible was fishlike not merely in countenance, but in dress: Her loose-fitting cream foxille flowed like a huge airy bladder from the high frilled neckline to the knees, where it was tightly gathered and dropped straight to the floor, hugging the calves and ankles in neat, anticlimactic pleats. She looked for all the world like a giant carp in a men’s club. And a dull, bored carp at that, not even a sentient Carp.

“Now your Ama, my dear. The reason she is incapable of supervising a dormitory. I’m all ears.”

Galinda had taken all afternoon to prepare. “You see, Madame Head, I didn’t like to say it publicly. But Ama Clutch suffered a terrible fall last summer when we were picnicking in the Pertha Hills. She reached for a handful of wild mountain thyme and went pitching over a cliff. She lay for weeks in a coma, and when she emerged she had no memory of the accident at all. If you asked her about it, she wouldn’t even know what you meant. Amnesia by trauma.”

“I see. How very tiresome for you. But why does this make her unequal to the job I proposed?”

“She has become addled. Ama Clutch, on occasion, gets confused as to what has Life and what doesn’t. She will sit and talk to, oh, say, a chair, and then relate its history back to us. Its aspirations, its reservations—”

“Its joys, its sorrows,” said Madame Morrible. “How truly novel. The emotional life of furniture. I never.”

“But, silly as this is, and a cause for hours of merriment, the corollary ailment is more alarming. Madame Morrible, I must tell you that Ama Clutch sometimes forgets that people are alive. Or animals.” Galinda paused, then added, “Or Animals, even.”

“Go on, my dear.”

“It is all right for me, because Ama has been my Ama all my life, and I know her. I know her ways. But she can sometimes forget a person is there, or needs her, or is a person. Once she cleaned a wardrobe and tipped it over onto the houseboy, breaking his back. She didn’t register his screaming right there, right at her feet. She folded the nightclothes and had a conversation with my mother’s evening gown, asking it all sorts of impertinent questions.”

“What a fascinating condition,” said Madame Morrible. “And how vexing for you, really.”

“I couldn’t have allowed her to accept responsibility for fourteen other girls,” Galinda confided. “For me, alone, there is no problem. I love the foolish old woman, in a way.”

Madame Morrible had said, “But what of your roomie? Can you jeopardize her well-being?”

“I didn’t ask for her.” Galinda looked the Head in her glazed, unblinking eye. “The poor Munchkinlander appears to be used to a life of distress. Either she will adjust or, I assume, she will petition you to be removed from my room. Unless, of course, you feel it your duty to move her for her own safety.”

Madame Morrible said, “I suppose if Miss Elphaba cannot live with what we give her, she will leave Crage Hall on her own accord. Don’t you think?”

It was the we in what we give her: Madame Morrible was binding Galinda into a campaign. They both knew it. Galinda struggled to maintain her autonomy. But she was only seventeen, and she had suffered that same indignity of exclusion in the Main Hall just hours ago. She didn’t know what Madame Morrible could have against Elphaba except the looks of her. But there was something, there was clearly something. What was it? She sensed it to be wrong somehow. “Don’t you think, dear?” said Madame Morrible, bowing a bit forward like a fish arching in a slow-motion leap.

“Well, of course, we must do what we can,” said Galinda, as vaguely as possible. But she seemed the fish, and caught on a most clever hook.

Out of the shadows of the reception room came a small tiktok thing, about three feet high, made of burnished bronze, with an identifying plate screwed into its front. The plate said Smith and Tinker’s Mechanical Man, in ornate script. The clockwork servant collected the empty teacups and whirred itself away. Galinda didn’t know how long it had been there, or what it had heard, but she had never liked tiktok creatures.

Elphaba had a bad case of what Galinda called the reading sulks. Elphaba didn’t curl up—she was too bony to curl—but she jackknifed herself nearer to herself, her funny pointed green nose poking in the moldy leaves of a book. She played with her hair while she read, coiling it up and down around fingers so thin and twiglike as to seem almost exoskeletal. Her hair never curled no matter how often Elphaba twined it around her hands. It was beautiful hair, in an odd, awful way, with a shine like the pelt of a healthy giltebeest. Black silk. Coffee spun into threads. Night rain. Galinda, not given to metaphor on the whole, found Elphaba’s hair entrancing, the more so because the girl was otherwise so ugly.

They didn’t talk much. Galinda was too busy forging alliances with the better girls who had been her rightful roomie prospects. No doubt she could switch rooms at half-term, or at any rate next fall. So Galinda left Elphaba alone, and she flew down the hall to gossip with her new friends. Milla, Pfannee, Shenshen. Just as in children’s books about boarding school, each new friend was wealthier than the one before.

At first Galinda didn’t mention who her roomie was. And Elphaba showed no sign of expecting Galinda’s company, which was a relief. But the gossip had to start sooner or later. The first wave of discussion about Elphaba concerned her wardrobe and her evident poverty, as if her classmates were above noticing her sickly and sickening color. “Someone told me that Madame Head had said Miss Elphaba was the Thropp Third Descending from Nest Hardings,” said Pfannee, who was also a Munchkinlander, but one of diminutive stock, not full-size like the Thropp family. “The Thropps are highly regarded in Nest Hardings and even beyond. The Eminent Thropp put together the area’s militia and tore up the Yellow Brick Road that the Ozma Regent had been laying in when we all were small—before the Glorious Revolution. There was no callousness in the Eminent Thropp or his wife or family, including his granddaughter Melena, you can be assured.” By callousness, of course, Pfannee meant greenness.

“But how the mighty have fallen! She’s as ragged as a gypsy,” observed Milla. “Have you ever seen such tawdry dresses? Her Ama should be sacked.”

“She has no Ama, I think,” said Shenshen. Galinda, who knew for sure, said nothing.

“They said she had spent time in Quadling Country,” Milla went on. “Perhaps her family had been exiled as criminals?”

“Or they were speculators in rubies,” said Shenshen.

“Then where’s the wealth?” snapped Milla. “Speculators in rubies did very well, Miss Shenshen. Our Miss Elphaba doesn’t have two barter tokens to rub together and call her own.”

“Perhaps it’s a kind of religious calling? A chosen poverty?” suggested Pfannee, and at this nonsense they all threw back their heads and chortled.

Elphaba, coming into the buttery for a cup of coffee, caused them to escalate into louder roars of laughter. Elphaba did not look over at them, but every other student did glance their way, each girl longing to be included in the jollity, which made the four new friends feel just fine.

Galinda was slow coming to terms with actual learning. She had considered her admission into Shiz University as a sort of testimony to her brilliance, and believed that she would adorn the halls of learning with her beauty and occasional clever sayings. She supposed, glumly, that she had meant to be a sort of living marble bust: This is Youthful Intelligence; admire Her. Isn’t She lovely?

It hadn’t actually dawned on Galinda that there was more to learn, and furthermore that she was expected to do it. The education all the new girls chiefly wanted, of course, had nothing to do with Madame Morrible or the prattling Animals at lecterns and on daises. What the girls wanted wasn’t equations, or quotations, or orations—they wanted Shiz itself. City life. The broad, offensive panoply of life and Life, seamlessly intertwined.

Galinda was relieved that Elphaba never took part in the outings the Amas organized. Since they often stopped at a lunchroom for a modest meal, the weekly brigade became known informally as the Chowder and Marching Society. The university district was aflame with autumn color, not just of dying leaves, but also of fraternity pennants, fluttering from rooftop and spire.

Galinda soaked up the architecture of Shiz. Here and there, mostly in protected College yards and side streets, the oldest surviving domestic architecture still leaned, ancient wattle-and-daub and exposed stud framing held up like paralytic grannies by stronger, newer relatives on either side. Then, in dizzying succession, unparalleled glories: Bloodstone Medieval, Merthic (both Least and the more fantastical Late), Gallantine with its symmetries and restraint, Gallantine Reformed with all those festering ogees and broken pediments, Bluestone Revival, Imperial Bombast, and Industrial Modern, or, as the critics in the liberal press put it, High Hostile Crudstyle, the form propagated by the modernity-minded Wizard of Oz.

Besides architecture, the excitement was tame, to be sure. On one notable occasion, which no Crage Hall girl present ever forgot, the senior boys from Three Queens College across the canal, for a lark and a dare, had tanked themselves up with beer in the middle of the afternoon, had hired a White Bear violinist, and had gone down to dance together under the willow trees, wearing nothing but their clinging cotton drawers and their school scarves. It was deliciously pagan, as they had set an old chipped statue of Lurline the Fairy Queen on a three-legged stool, and she seemed to smile at their loose-limbed gaiety. The girls and the Amas pretended shock, but poorly; they lingered, watching, until horrified proctors from Three Queens came rushing out to round the revelers up. Near nudity was one thing, but public Lurlinism—even as a joke—bordered on being intolerably retrograde, even royalist. And that did not do in the Wizard’s reign.

One Saturday evening, when the Amas had a rare night off and had taken themselves in to a pleasure faith meeting in Ticknor Circus, Galinda had a brief and silly squabble with Pfannee and Shenshen, after which she retired early to her bedchamber, complaining of a headache. Elphaba was sitting up in her bed with the commissary brown blanket tucked around her. She was hunched forward over a book, as usual, and her hair hung down like brackets on either side of her face. She looked to Galinda like one of those etchings—the natural history books were full of them—of odd Winkie mountain women who hide their strangeness with a shawl over the head. Elphaba was munching on the pips of an apple, having eaten all the rest of it. “Well, you look cozy enough, Miss Elphaba,” said Galinda, challengingly. In three months it was the first social remark she had managed to make to her roomie.

“Looks are only looks,” said Elphaba, not looking up.

“Will it break your concentration if I sit in front of the fire?”

“You cast a shadow if you sit just there.”

“Oh, sorry,” said Galinda, and moved. “Mustn’t cast shadows, must we, when urgent words are waiting to be read?”

Elphaba was back in her book already, and didn’t answer.

“What the dickens are you reading, night and day?”

It seemed as if Elphaba were coming up for air from a still, isolated pool. “While I don’t read the same thing every day, you know, tonight I am reading some of the speeches of the early unionist fathers.”

“Why ever would anyone want to do that?”

“I don’t know. I don’t even know if I want to read them. I’m just reading them.”

“But why? Miss Elphaba the Delirious, why, why?”

Elphaba looked up at Galinda and smiled. “Elphaba the Delirious. I like it.”

Before she had a chance to bite it back, Galinda returned the smile, and at the same time a sweeping wind sent a handful of hail against the glass, and the latch broke. Galinda leaped to swing the casement shut, but Elphaba scuttled to the far corner of the room, away from the wet. “Give me the leather luggage grip, Miss Elphaba, from inside my satchel—there on the shelf, behind the hatboxes—yes—and I’ll secure this until we can get the porter to fix it tomorrow.” Elphaba found the strap, but in doing so the hat boxes tumbled down, and three colorful hats rolled out onto the cold floor. While Galinda scrabbled up on a chair to organize the window shut again, Elphaba returned the hats to their boxes. “Oh, try it on, try that one on,” said Galinda. She meant to have something to laugh at, to tell Misses Pfannee and Shenshen about and so to work her way back into their good graces.

“Oh, I daren’t, Miss Galinda,” Elphaba said, and went to set the hat away.

“No, do, I insist,” Galinda said, “for a lark. I’ve never seen you in something pretty.”

“I don’t wear pretty things.”

“What’s the harm?” said Galinda. “Just here. No one else need see you.”

Elphaba stood facing the fire, but turned her head on her shoulders to look long and unblinkingly at Galinda, who had not yet hopped down from the chair. The Munchkinlander was in her nightgown, a drab sack without benefit of lace edging or piping. The green face above the wheat-gray fabric seemed almost to glow, and the glorious long straight black hair fell right over where breasts should be if she would ever reveal any evidence that she possessed them. Elphaba looked like something between an animal and an Animal, like something more than life but not quite Life. There was an expectancy but no intuition, was that it?—like a child who has never remembered having a dream being told to have sweet dreams. You’d almost call it unrefined, but not in a social sense—more in a sense of nature not having done its full job with Elphaba, not quite having managed to make her enough like herself.

“Oh, put the damn hat on, really,” said Galinda, for whom, where introspection was concerned, enough was enough.

Elphaba obliged. The thing was the lovely roundel bought from the best milliner in the Pertha Hills. It had orangey swags and a yellow lace net that could be draped to achieve varying degrees of disguise. On the wrong head it would look ghastly, and Galinda expected to have to bite the inside of her lip to keep from laughing. It was the kind of superfeminine thing boys in a pantomime wore when they pretended to be girls.

But Elphaba dropped the whole sugary plate onto her strange pointed head, and looked at Galinda again from underneath the broad brim. She seemed like a rare flower, her skin stemlike in its soft pearlescent sheen, the hat a botanical riot. “Oh Miss Elphaba,” said Galinda, “you terrible mean thing, you’re pretty.”

“Oh, and now you have lied, so go confess to the unionist minister,” said Elphaba. “Is there a looking glass?”

“Of course there is, down the hall in the lavatory.”

“Not there. I’m not going to be seen by those ninnies in this.”

“Well then,” decided Galinda, “can you find an angle without hiding the firelight, and look at your reflection in the dark window?”

They both gazed at the green and flowery spectre reflected in the watery old glass, surrounded by the blackness, driven through with the wild rain beyond. A maplefruit leaf, shaped like a star with blunted points, or like a heart grown lopsided, suddenly whirled out of the night and plastered itself on the reflection in the glass, gleaming red and reflecting the firelight, just where the heart would be—or so it seemed from the angle at which Galinda stood.

“Entrancing,” she said. “There’s some strange exotic quality of beauty about you. I never thought.”

“Surprise,” said Elphaba, and then nearly blushed, if darker green constituted a blush—“I mean, surprise, not beauty. It’s just surprise. ‘Well, what do you know.’ It’s not beauty.”

“Who am I to argue,” said Galinda, tossing her curls and striking a pose, and Elphaba actually laughed at that, and Galinda laughed back, partly horrified as she did so. Elphaba tore the hat off then, and returned it to its box, and when she picked up her book again Galinda said, “So what is Beauty reading anyway? I mean really, tell me, why the old sermons?”

“My father is a unionist minister,” said Elphaba. “I’m just curious what it’s all about, that’s all.”

“Why don’t you just ask him?”

Elphaba didn’t answer. Her face took on a solid, waiting look, like that of an owl just about to go for a mouse.

“So what’re they on about? Anything interesting?” said Galinda. No sense giving up now, there was nothing else to do and she was too wrought up by the storm to sleep.

“This one is thinking about good and evil,” said Elphaba. “Whether they really exist at all.”

“Oh, yawn,” said Galinda. “Evil exists, I know that, and its name is Boredom, and ministers are the guiltiest crew of all.”

“You don’t really think that?”

Galinda didn’t often stop to consider whether she believed in what she said or not; the whole point of conversation was flow. “Well, I didn’t mean to insult your father, for all I know he is an entertaining and lively preacher.”

“No, I mean do you think evil really exists?”

“Well, how do I know what I think?”

“Well, ask yourself, Miss Galinda. Does evil exist?”

“I don’t know. You say. Does evil exist?”

“I don’t expect to know.” The look went slanty and inwards somehow, or was it the hair swinging forward like a veil again?

“Why don’t you just ask your father? I don’t understand. He should know, that’s his job.”

“My father taught me a lot,” Elphaba said slowly. “He was very well educated indeed. He taught me to read and write and think, and more. But not enough. I just think, like our teachers here, that if ministers are effective, they’re good at asking questions to get you to think. I don’t think they’re supposed to have the answers. Not necessarily.”

“Oh, well, tell that to our boring minister at home. He has all the answers, and charges for them, too.”

“But maybe there’s something to what you say,” said Elphaba. “I mean, evil and boredom. Evil and ennui. Evil and the lack of stimulation. Evil and sluggish blood.”

“You’re writing a poem, it sounds like. Why ever would a girl be interested in evil?”

“I’m not interested in it. It’s just what the early sermons are all on about. So I’m thinking about what they’re thinking about, that’s all. Sometimes they talk about diet and not eating Animals, and then I think of that. I just like to think about what I’m reading. Don’t you?”

“I don’t read very well. So I don’t think I think very well either.” Galinda smiled. “I dress to kill, though.”

There was no response from Elphaba. Galinda, usually pleased that she knew the correct way to steer every conversation into a paean to herself, was flummoxed. She lamely ventured on, annoyed at having to expend the effort. “Well, whatever did those old brutes think about evil, then?”

“It’s hard to say exactly. They seemed to be obsessed with locating it somewhere. I mean, an evil spring in the mountains, an evil smoke, evil blood in the veins going from parent to child. They were sort of like the early explorers of Oz, except the maps they made were of invisible stuff, pretty inconsistent one with the other.”

“And where is evil located?” Galinda asked, flopping onto her bed and closing her eyes.

“Well, they didn’t agree, did they? Or else what would they have to write sermons arguing about? Some said the original evil was the vacuum caused by the Fairy Queen Lurline leaving us alone here. When goodness removes itself, the space it occupies corrodes and becomes evil, and maybe splits apart and multiplies. So every evil thing is a sign of the absence of deity.”

“Well I wouldn’t know an evil thing if it fell on me,” said Galinda.

“The early unionists, who were a lot more Lurlinist than unionists are today, argued that some invisible pocket of corruption was floating around the neighborhood, a direct descendent of the pain the world felt when Lurline left. Like a patch of cold air on a warm still night. A perfectly agreeable soul might march through it and become infected, and then go and kill a neighbor. But then was it your fault if you walked through a patch of badness? If you couldn’t see it? There wasn’t ever any council of unionists that decided it one way or the other, and nowadays so many people don’t even believe in Lurline.”

“But they believe in evil still,” said Galinda with a yawn. “Isn’t that funny, that deity is passé but the attributes and implications of deity linger—”

“You are thinking!” Elphaba cried. Galinda raised herself to her elbows at the enthusiasm in her roomie’s voice.

“I am about to sleep, because this is profoundly boring to me,” Galinda said, but Elphaba was grinning from ear to ear.

In the morning Ama Clutch regaled them both with tales of the night out. There was a talented young witch in nothing but shocking pink undergarments, adorned with feathers and beads. She sang songs to the audience and collected food tokens in her cleavage from the blushing undergraduate men in the nearer tables. She did a little domestic magic, turning water into orange juice, changing cabbages into carrots, and running knives through a terrified piglet, which spouted champagne instead of blood. They all had a sip. A terrible fat man with a beard came on and chased the witch around as if he would kiss her—oh, it was too funny, too funny! In the end the whole cast and audience together stood and sang “What We Don’t Allow in the Public Halls (In Fact Is for Sale in the Cheaper Stalls).” The Amas had a riotous good time, every one of them.

“Really,” said Galinda sniffily. “The pleasure faith is so—so common.”

“But I see the window broke,” said Ama Clutch. “I hope it wasn’t boys trying to climb in.”

“Are you mad?” said Galinda. “In that storm?”

“What storm?” said Ama Clutch. “That don’t make sense. Last night was as calm as moonlight.”

“Hah, that was some show,” said Galinda. “You were so caught up in pleasure faith you lost your bearings, Ama Clutch.” They went down to breakfast together, leaving Elphaba still asleep, or pretending to be asleep maybe. Though as they walked along the corridors, sun through the broad windows making racks of light on the cold slate floors, Galinda did wonder about the capriciousness of weather. Was it even possible for a storm to pitch itself against one part of town and overlook another? There was so much about the world she didn’t know.

“She did nothing but chatter about evil,” said Galinda to her friends, over buttered brisks with ploughfoot jelly. “Some inside tap was turned on, and prattle just poured out of her. And, girls, when she tried on my hat, I could’ve died. She looked like somebody’s maiden aunt come up out of the grave, I mean as frumpy as a Cow. I endured it only for you, so I could tell you all; otherwise I’d have expired with glee on the spot. It was so very much!”

“You poor thing, to have to be our spy and stand the shame of that grasshopper roomie!” said Pfannee devoutly, clasping Galinda’s hand. “You’re too good!”

3

One evening—the first evening of snow—Madame Morrible held a poetry soiree. Boys from Three Queens and Ozma Towers were invited. Galinda brought out her cerise satin gown with the matching shawl and slippers and an heirloom Gillikinese fan, painted with a pattern of ferns and pfenix. She arrived early to lay claim to the upholstered chair that would best set off her own attire, and she dragged the chair over to the bookshelves so that the light from library tapers would gently fall on her. The rest of the girls—not only the freshers, but the sophisters and seniors—entered in a whispering clot and arranged themselves on sofas and lounges in Crage Hall’s nicest parlor. The boys who came were somewhat disappointing; there weren’t that many, and they looked terrified, or giggled with one another. Then the professors and doctors arrived, not just the Animals from Crage Hall, but the boys’ professors too, who were mostly men. The girls began to be glad they had dressed well, for while the boys were a spotty bunch, the male professors had grave and charming smiles.

Even some of the Amas came, though they sat behind a screen at the back of the room. The sound of their knitting needles going at a rapid rate was soothing to Galinda, somehow. She knew Ama Clutch would be there.

The double doors at the end of the parlor were swept open by that little bronze industrial crab Galinda had met on her first evening at Crage Hall. It had been especially serviced for the occasion; you could still detect the cutting scent of metal polish. Madame Morrible then made an entrance, severe and striking in a coal black cape, which she let drop to the floor (the thingy picked it up and slung it over a sofa back); her gown was a fiery orange, with abalone lake shells stitched all over it. Despite herself Galinda had to admire the effect. In tones even more unctuous than usual, Madame Morrible welcomed the visitors and led polite applause at the notion of Poetry and Its Civilizing Effects.

Then she spoke on the new verse form sweeping the social parlors and poetry dens of Shiz. “It is known as the Quell,” said Madame Morrible, in her Headmistress’s smile displaying an impressive assembly of teeth. “The Quell is a brief poem, uplifting in nature. It pairs a sequence of thirteen short lines with a concluding, unrhyming apothegm. The reward of the poem is in the revealing contrast between rhyming argument and concluding remark. Sometimes they may contradict each other, but always they illuminate and, like all poetry, sanctify life.” She beamed like a beacon in a fog. “Tonight especially, a Quell might serve as an anodyne to the unpleasant disruptions we have been hearing about in our nation’s capital.” The boy students looked at least alert, and all the professors nodded, though Galinda could tell none of the girl students had a clue as to what “unpleasant disruptions” Madame Morrible was prattling on about.

A third-year girl at the hammer-strung keyboard clattered out a couple of chords, and the guests cleared their throats and looked at their shoes. Galinda saw Elphaba arrive in the back of the room, dressed in her usual casual red shift, two books under her arm and a scarf wound around her head. She sank into the last empty chair, and bit into an apple just as Madame Morrible was drawing in a dramatic breath to begin.

    Sing a hymn to rectitude,
    Ye forward-thinking multitude.
    Advance in humble gratitude
    For strictest rules of attitude.
    To elevate the Common Good
    In Brotherhood and Sisterhood
    We celebrate authority.
    Fraternity, Sorority,
    United, pressing onward, we
    Restrict the ills of liberty.
    There is no numinosity
    Like Power’s generosity
    In helping curb atrocity.
    Bear down on the rod and foil the child.

Madame Morrible lowered her head to signify that she was done. There was a rumbling of indistinct comments. Galinda, who didn’t know much about Poetry, thought perhaps this was the accepted way of appreciating it. She grumbled a little bit to Shenshen, who sat in a straightback chair to one side, looking dropsical. Wax from the taper was about to drip onto Shenshen’s silk-shouldered white gown with the lemon-chiffon swags, and ruin it, most likely, but Galinda decided Shenshen’s family could afford to replace a gown. She kept still.

“Another,” said Madame Morrible. “Another Quell.”

The room grew silent, but a little uneasily so?

    Alas! For impropriety,
    The guillotine of piety.
    To remedy society
    Indulge not to satiety
    In mirth and shameless gaiety.
    Choose sobering sobriety.
    Behave as if the deity
    Approaches in its mystery,
    And greet it with sonority.
    Let your especial history
    Be built upon sorority
    Whose Virtues do exemplify,
    And Social Good thus multiply.
    Animals should be seen and not heard.

Again, there was mumbling, but it was of a different nature now, a meaner key. Doctor Dillamond harrumphed and beat a cloven hoof against the floor, and was heard to say, “Well that’s not poetry, that’s propaganda, and it’s not even good propaganda at that.”

Elphaba sidled over to Galinda’s side with her chair under her arm, and plunked it down between Galinda and Shenshen. She put her bony behind on its slatted seat and leaned to Galinda and asked, “What do you make of this?”

It was the first time Galinda had ever been addressed by Elphaba in public. Mortification bloomed. “I don’t know,” she said faintly, looking in the other direction.

“It’s a cleverness, isn’t it?” said Elphaba. “I mean that last line, you couldn’t tell by that fancy accent whether it was meant to be Animals or animals. No wonder Dillamond’s furious.”

And he was. Doctor Dillamond looked around the room as if trying to marshal the opposition. “I’m shocked, shocked,” he said. “Deeply shocked,” he amended, and he marched out of the room. Professor Lenx, the Boar who taught math, left too, accidentally crushing an antique gilded sideboard through trying to avoid stepping on Miss Milla’s yellowlace train. Mister Mikko, the Ape who taught history, sat dolefully in the shadows, too confused and ill at ease to make a move. “Well,” said Madame Morrible in a carrying tone, “one expects poetry, if it is Poetry, to offend. It is the Right of Art.”

“I think she’s bonkers,” said Elphaba. Galinda found it too horrible. What if even one of the pimply boys saw Elphaba whispering to her! She’d never hold her head up in society again. Her life was ruined. “Shhh, I’m listening, I love poetry,” Galinda told her sternly. “Don’t talk to me, you’re ruining my evening.”

Elphaba sat back, and finished her apple, and they both kept listening. The grumbling and murmuring grew louder after each poem, and the boys and girls began to relax and look around at one another.

When the last Quell of the evening had knelled (to the cryptic aphorism “A witch in time saves nine”), Madame Morrible retired to uneven applause. She allowed her bronze servant to administer tea to the guests, and then the girls, and finally the Amas. In a heap of rustling silk and clicking abalone lake shells, she received compliments from the male professors and some of the braver boys, and begged them to sit near her so she could enjoy their criticisms. “Do tell the truth. I was overly dramatic, wasn’t I? It is my curse. The stage called, but I chose a life of Service to Girls.” She lowered her eyelashes in modesty as her captive audience mumbled a lukewarm protest.

Galinda was still trying to extricate herself from the embarrassing company of Elphaba, who kept on about the Quells and what they meant, and if they were any good. “How do I know, how should I know, we’re first-year girls, remember?” said Galinda, yearning to swish over to where Pfannee, Milla, and Shenshen were squeezing lemons into the teacups of a few edgy boys.

“Well, your opinion is as good as hers, I think,” said Elphaba. “That’s the real power of art, I think. Not to chide but to provoke challenge. Otherwise why bother?”

A boy came up to them. Galinda thought he wasn’t much to look at, but anything was better than the green leech at her side. “How do you do?” said Galinda, not even waiting for him to get up his nerve. “It’s so nice to meet you. You must be from, let’s see—”

“Well, I’m from Briscoe Hall, actually,” he said. “But I’m a Munchkinlander originally. As you can tell.” And she could, for he hardly came up to her shoulder. He wasn’t bad looking for all that. A spun-cotton mess of ill-combed golden hair, a toothy smile, a better complexion than some. The evening tunic he wore was a provincial blue, but there were flecks of silver thread running through it. He was trim, nicely so. His boots were polished and he stood a little bandy-legged, feet pointed out.

“This is what I love,” said Galinda, “meeting strangers. This is Shiz at its finest. I am Gillikinese.” She just managed to keep herself from adding, of course, for she believed it evident in her attire. Munchkinlander girls had a habit of quieter dress, so understated that they were often mistaken, in Shiz, for servants.

“Well then, hello to you,” said the boy. “My name is Master Boq.”

“Miss Galinda of the Arduennas of the Uplands.”

“And you?” said Boq, turning to Elphaba. “Who are you?”

“I’m leaving,” she said. “Fresh dreams, all.”

“No, don’t leave,” said Boq. “I think I know you.”

“You don’t know me,” said Elphaba, pausing as she turned. “However could you know me?”

“You’re Miss Elphie, aren’t you?”

“Miss Elphie!” cried Galinda gaily. “How delightful!”

“How do you know who I am?” said Elphaba. “Master Boq from Munchkinland? I don’t know you.”

“You and I played together when you were tiny,” said Boq. “My father was the mayor of the village you were born in. I think. You were born in Rush Margins, in Wend Hardings, weren’t you? You’re the daughter of the unionist minister, I forget his name.”

“Frex,” said Elphaba. Her eyes looked slanted and wary.

“Frexspar the Godly!” said Boq. “That’s right. You know they still talk about him, and your mama, and the night the Clock of the Time Dragon came to Rush Margins. I was two or three years old and they took me to see it, but I don’t remember that. I do remember that you were in a play set with me when I was still in short pants. Do you remember Gawnette? She was the woman who minded us. And Bfee? He is my dad. Do you remember Rush Margins?”

“This is all smoke and guesswork,” said Elphaba. “How can I contradict? Let me tell you about what happened in your life before you can remember it. You were born a frog.” (This was unkind, as Boq did have an amphibious look about him.) “You got sacrificed to the Clock of the Time Dragon and were turned into a boy. But on your marriage night when your wife opens her legs you’ll turn back into a tadpole and—”

“Miss Elphaba!” cried Galinda, flicking open her fan to wave the flush of shame from her face. “Your tongue!”

“Oh well, I have no childhood,” said Elphaba. “So you can say what you like. I grew up in Quadling Country with the marsh people. I squelch when I walk. You don’t want to talk to me. Talk to Miss Galinda, she’s much better in parlors than I am. I have to go now.” Elphaba nodded a good night salute and escaped, almost at a run.

“Why did she say all that?” said Boq, no embarrassment in his voice, just wonder. “Of course I remember her. How many green people are there?”

“It’s just possible,” considered Galinda, “that she didn’t like being recognized on account of her skin color. I don’t know for sure, but perhaps she’s sensitive about it.”

“She must know that it’s what people would remember.”

“Well, as far as I am aware, you are right about who she is,” Galinda went on. “They tell me her great-grandfather is the Eminent Thropp of Colwen Grounds in Nest Hardings.”

“That’s the one,” Boq said. “Elphie. I never thought I’d see her again.”

“Won’t you have some more tea? I’ll call the server,” Galinda said. “Let us sit here and you can tell me all about Munchkinland. I am aquiver with curiosity.” She perched herself back on the chair-in-sympathetic-colors and looked her very best. Boq sat down, and shook his head, as if bewildered by the apparition of Elphaba.

When Galinda retired that evening, Elphaba was already in bed, blankets pulled up over her head, and a patently theatrical snore issuing forth. Galinda huffed herself into bed with a wump, annoyed that she could feel rejected by the green girl.

In the week that followed much was said about the evening of Quells. Doctor Dillamond interrupted his biology lecture to call for a response from his students. The girls didn’t understand what a biological response to poetry might be and sat silent at his leading questions. He finally exploded, “Doesn’t anyone make the connection between the expression of those thoughts and what’s been going on in the Emerald City?”

Miss Pfannee, who didn’t believe she was paying tuition in order to be yelled at, snapped back at him. “We don’t have the tiniest notion what’s going on in the Emerald City! Stop playing games with us; if you have something to say, say it. Don’t bleat so.”

Doctor Dillamond stared out the windows and seemed to be trying to control his temper. The students were thrilled with the little drama. Then the Goat turned and in a milder voice than they expected he told them that the Wizard of Oz had proclaimed Banns on Animal Mobility, effective several weeks ago. This meant not only that Animals were restricted in their access to travel conveyances, lodgings, and public services. The Mobility it referred to was also professional. Any Animal coming of age was prohibited from working in the professions or the public sector. They were, effectively, to be herded back to the farmlands and wilds if they wanted to work for wages at all.

“What do you think Madame Morrible was saying when she ended that Quell with the epigram Animals should be seen and not heard?” asked the Goat tersely.

“Well, anyone would be upset,” said Galinda. “I mean, any Animal. But it’s not as if your job is threatened, is it? Here you are, still teaching us.”

“What about my children? What about my kids?”

“Do you have kids? I didn’t know you were married.”

The Goat closed his eyes. “I’m not married, Miss Galinda. But I might be. Or I may. Or perhaps I have nieces and nephews. They have already been banned effectively from studying at Shiz because they can’t hold a pencil to write an essay with. How many Animals have you ever seen in this paradise of education?” Well, it was true; there were none.

“Well, I do think it’s pretty dreadful,” said Galinda. “Why would the Wizard of Oz do such a thing?”

“Why indeed,” said the Goat.

“No, really, why. It’s a real question. I don’t know.”

“I don’t know either.” The Goat turned to his rostrum and shoved some papers this way and that, and was then seen pawing a handkerchief from a lower shelf, and blowing his nose. “My grandmothers were milking-Goats at a farm in Gillikin. Through their lifelong sacrifices and labors they purchased the help of a local schoolteacher to educate me and to take dictation when I went for my exams. Their efforts are about to go to waste.”

“But you can still teach!” said Pfannee petulantly.

“The thin edge of the wedge, my dear,” said the Goat, and dismissed the class early. Galinda found herself glancing over toward Elphaba, who had a strange, focused look. As Galinda fled the classroom, Elphaba approached the front of the room, where Doctor Dillamond stood shaking in uncontrolled spasms, his horned head bowed.

A few days later, Madame Morrible gave one of her occasional open lectures on Early Hymns and Pagan Paeans. She called for questions, and the entire assembly was startled to see Elphaba unfold herself from her customary fetal position in the back of the room and address the Head.

“Madame Morrible, if you please,” said Elphaba, “we never had an opportunity to discuss the Quells that you recited in the parlor last week.”

“Discuss,” said Madame Morrible with a generous though shooing wave of the bangled hands.

“Well, Doctor Dillamond seemed to think they were in questionable taste, given the Banns on Animal Mobility.”

“Doctor Dillamond, alas,” said Madame Morrible, “is a doctor. He is not a poet. He is also a Goat, and I might ask you girls if we have ever had a great Goat sonneteer or balladeer? Alas, dear Miss Elphaba, Doctor Dillamond doesn’t understand the poetic convention of irony. Would you like to define irony for the class, please?”

“I don’t believe I can, Madame.”

“Irony, some say, is the art of juxtaposing incongruous parts. One needs a knowing distance. Irony presupposes detachment, which, alas, in the case of Animal Rights, we may forgive Doctor Dillamond for being without.”

“So that phrase that he objected to—Animals should be seen and not heard—that was ironic?” continued Elphaba, studying her papers and not looking at Madame Morrible. Galinda and her classmates were enthralled, for it was clear that each of the females at opposite ends of the room would have enjoyed seeing the other crumple in a sudden attack of the spleen.

“One could consider it in an ironic mode if one chose,” said Madame Morrible.

“How do you choose?” said Elphaba.

“How impertinent!” said Madame Morrible.

“Well, but I don’t mean impertinence. I’m trying to learn. If you—if anyone—thought that statement was true, then it isn’t in conflict with the boring bossy bit that preceded it. It’s just argument and conclusion, and I don’t see the irony.”

“You don’t see much, Miss Elphaba,” said Madame Morrible. “You must learn to put yourself in the shoes of someone wiser than you are, and look from that angle. To be stuck in ignorance, to be circumscribed by the walls of one’s own modest acumen, well, it is very sad in one so young and bright.” She spit out the last word, and it seemed to Galinda, somehow, a low comment on Elphaba’s skin color, which today was indeed lustrous with the effort of public speaking.

“But I was trying to put myself in the shoes of Doctor Dillamond,” said Elphaba, almost whining, but not giving up.

“In the case of poetic interpretation, I venture to suggest, it may indeed be true. Animals should not be heard,” snapped Madame Morrible.

“Do you mean that ironically?” said Elphaba, but she sat down with her hands over her face, and did not look up again for the rest of the session.

4

When the second semester began, and Galinda was still saddled with Elphaba as a roomie, she made a brief protest to Madame Morrible. But the Head would allow no shifting, no rearranging. “Far too upsetting for my other girls,” she said. “Unless you’d like to be removed to the Pink Dormitory. Your Ama Clutch seems, to my watchful eye, to be recovering from the ailments you described when first we met. Perhaps now she is up to overseeing fifteen girls?”

“No, no,” said Galinda quickly. “There are recurrences from time to time, but I don’t mention them. I don’t like to be a bother.”

“How thoughtful,” said Madame Morrible. “Bless you, sweet thing. Now my dear, I wonder if we might take a moment, as long as you’ve come in for a chat, to discuss your academic plans for next fall? As you know, second year is when girls choose their specialties. Have you given it any thought?”

“Very little,” said Galinda. “Frankly, I thought my talents would just emerge and make it clear whether I should try natural science, or the arts, or sorcery, or perhaps even history. I don’t think I’m cut out for ministerial work.”

“I’m not surprised that one such as you should be in doubt,” said Madame Morrible, which wasn’t greatly encouraging to Galinda. “But may I suggest sorcery? You could be very good at it. I pride myself on knowing this sort of thing.”

“I’ll think about it,” said Galinda, though her early appetite for sorcery had waned once she’d heard what a grind it was to learn spells and, worse, to understand them.

“In the event you choose sorcery, it might—just might—be possible to find for you a new roomie,” said Madame Morrible, “given that Miss Elphaba has already told me her interests lie in the natural sciences.”

“Oh well then, I certainly will give it a great deal of thought,” said Galinda. She struggled with unnamed conflicts within her. Madame Morrible, for all her upper-class diction and fabulous wardrobe, seemed just a tad—oh—dangerous. As if her big public smile were composed of the light glancing off knives and lances, as if her deep voice masked the rumbling of distant explosions. Galinda always felt as if she couldn’t see the whole picture. It was disconcerting, and to her credit at least Galinda felt inside herself the ripping apart of some valuable fabric—was it integrity?—when she sat in Madame Morrible’s parlor and drank the perfect tea.

“For the sister, I hear, is eventually coming up to Shiz,” concluded Madame Morrible a few minutes later, as if silence had not intervened, and several tasty biscuits, “because there’s nothing I can do to stop it. And that, I understand, would be dreadful. You would not like it. The sister being as she is. Undoubtedly spending much time in Miss Elphaba’s room, being tended to.” She smiled wanly. A puff of powdery aroma came forward from the flank of her neck, almost as if Madame Morrible could somehow dispense a pleasant personal odor at will.

“The sister being as she is.” Madame Morrible tutted and wagged her head back and forth as she saw Galinda to the door. “Miserable, really, but I suppose we shall all pull together and cope. That is sorority, isn’t it?” The Head grasped her shawl and put a gentle hand on Galinda’s shoulder. Galinda shivered, and was sure Madame Morrible felt it, knew it, but the Head never registered a sign of it. “But then, my use of sorority—how ironic. Too witty. Given a long enough time, of course, a wide enough frame, there is nothing said or done, ever, that isn’t ironic in the end.” She squeezed Galinda’s shoulder blade as if it were a bicycle handle, almost harder than was proper for a woman to do. “We can only hope—ha ha—that the sister comes with some veils of her own! But that’s a year yet. Meanwhile we have time. Think about sorcery, would you? Do. Now good-bye, my pet, and fresh dreams.”

Galinda walked back to her room slowly, wondering what Elphaba’s sister was like to provoke those catty remarks about veils. She wanted to ask Elphaba. But she couldn’t think of how to do it. She didn’t have the nerve.